Ashley Yeh - The Montessori Home: Create a Space for Your Child to Thrive

For my incredible husband and our amazing children,
who continue to inspire me to learn and grow.

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The funny thing about this book is that it isnt really about your home at all. At its core, this book is about your child. Its about understanding how children use their environment to fulfill their own potential and understanding your distinct role as you guide them on their path. Its about cultivating a new perspective, one that engenders deep respect for your child as a human being and creates more joy and harmony in your life together. And as we explore each room of your home throughout the chapters that follow, you will begin to see the world quite differently. Youll see it through your childs eyes.

Just like so many of the stories that other parents and caregivers across the globe have shared with me, my own journey into Montessori came about by happy accident. As a new mother of a six-month-old baby, I found myself on one sunny afternoon during her nap time researching local daycares and preschools in preparation for my eventual return to work as a public school teacher. Discovering that there was a local Montessori school nearby, I suddenly recalled my own long-forgotten time as a child in a Montessori elementary program. As many fond memories began to resurface, I felt a subtle but determined shift in my focus as a parent. I knew in my heart that I wanted a Montessori education for my child.

Upon further research into the quality of local Montessori schools, I stumbled upon a few reviews from parents that talked about their experiences in applying Montessori principles at home. My curiosity was immediately piqued, and I tumbled headlong down an internet rabbit hole of how to implement Montessori practices from birth. This was the precise moment in time that my understanding and respect for children, and my perspective as a parent, was forever changed.

Over the last several years, the Montessori approach has not only become a lifestyle for my family, but it has also developed into a fervent passion in my professional life. Ive been so fortunate to be able to share what Ive learned along the way with thousands of other parents and caregivers all over the world. And every day, I am privy to countless inspiring tales of success, as families open their hearts and homes to the many benefits of the Montessori approach for their own children.

So why choose a Montessori lifestyle for our children? In doing so, we offer the freedom to move, explore, participate, and learn. We follow their interests as they grow and meet them exactly where they are, without trying to change them. And by setting up our homes to be accessible, with our childrens independence in mind, we help them to feel confident, joyful, and respected. Given the freedom to be curious and creative, they naturally cultivate a love for learning. In the long term, this guides our children toward becoming happy, self-disciplined individuals who feel confident about who they are, have a sense of their role in society, and want to contribute to the greater good of the world.

Although the Montessori approach is most commonly associated with formal education, this book offers an accessible, practical guide for parents to set up their home in a way that fosters their young childs independence while supporting their needs, interests, and abilities. These ideas are applicable to homes and families of all shapes and sizes and are appropriate whether or not your child attends a traditional daycare or school, a brick-and-mortar Montessori school, or a home school. You can take heart in knowing that, at the end of the day, the greatest influence on your childs development will always be the rhythm and flow of life in your own home.

It was Dr. Maria Montessori who said, The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind. And it is my greatest hope that this book will help to further spread the Montessori love across the globe, creating more joy for families everywhere and raising up the future of our own humanity, beginning with the way we parent our children at home.

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The Montessori method of education bears the namesake of its creator, Maria Montessori, who was a woman ahead of her time and a luminary of early childhood education.

Maria was born in the small town of Chiaravalle, Italy, on August 31, 1870. Her father was a financial manager with staunchly traditional values, while her mother was well educated and an avid reader, quite uncommon qualities among Italian women of the time. Much like her mother, Maria was a good student with a natural thirst for knowledge. As a teenager, she enrolled in an all-boys technical institute to prepare for a potential career in engineering. This was a decision made against her fathers wishes, as his more conventional values dictated that Maria should have pursued a study of the classics, as did most other women.

In time, Maria changed her mind but decided to pursue medicineyet another male-dominated fieldinstead, which was a most unusual aspiration for women. Although Maria did not initially gain entrance to medical school, she persevered by undertaking additional coursework to bolster her application and was eventually accepted into the University of Romes medical program as the only woman in her cohort. When she graduated in 1896, she became one of Italys first female physicians.

While her early career work was primarily focused on the fields of pediatrics and psychiatry, Marias observations of intellectually and developmentally disabled children in the asylums of Rome led to her eventual interest in education and ultimately spurred her to question the established pedagogical practices of her time. In 1900, when she became codirector of a new training institute for special education teachers, Maria seized the opportunity to study her own ideas about education from a scientific perspective. She developed many of her own methods and materials, based on the work of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and douard Sguin, for use with the children in the program. Many of the children made such remarkable learning gains that they were later able to pass public examinations commonly given to neurotypical children, and the program was declared a great success.