Tutorial Tuesday: Setting up a Montessori Homeschool Classroom

Hello, this week's tutorial is graciously brought to you by Kerri from Momma of 4 Cutiez. Please stop by there and show her some love by leaving a comment. She has some good resources on Montessori and Autism. Hope you enjoy the tutorial!


Alright, I finally got the shelves up in our new school room downstairs. I still have to go through another laundry basket of "stuff" and put the maps and posters on the wall, but finally have most of it gone through!! So here it is....

OK, so the paint is out of place forgive me, but everything else looks pretty tidy!! :) To the far left is our sensorial shelf. Top shelf includes homemade keys and locks board, chalk boards, measuring cups, and pourers. I would not classify any of these items sensorial, but since we have our practical life shelf in the kitchen I needed a place for these guys to go during school time. The second shelf holds our current sensory bin, (which is the coffee sensory bin) our geometrical solids, (omit the paints hanging out there) our homemade sand drawing tray, and our oceans in a bottle we made with Mamma of Many Blessings. On the bottom shelf I'm holding my trays, smelling bottles, geometrical shapes, and our sound boxes.

The middle shelf is our language shelf. I only have my homemade sandpaper letters here for now. I usually keep my movable alphabet on top, but it's being held hostage by Lil Einstein currently.

Last shelf is our geography shelf. We haven't acquired much geography stuff yet. When I truly am in need of something Mamma of Many Blessings usually has what I need. :) I also believe you are able to  acquire as you go. At least that's what I've been doing and it's been working for me. It's also better on my pocket book to spend a little bit here, and a little bit there. On the top of the geography shelf is our new cultural finds. The next shelf holds our children of the world finger puppets and globe filled with the children of the world wooden dolls. The kids really enjoy these!! We purchased them for fairly cheap at  Oriental Trading Company. The next two shelves hold country flash cards and a map of the world puzzle I got from garage sales.

Our math shelf.

On the very top is our divisions board I got from Amazon and a clock I got at a used curriculum sale. The next shelf holds our division bead materials, base ten cube materials, our golden bead ten bars I made, sand paper letters I made, and more beading material I made also.

On this shelf is our spindle box and more base ten materials. You can never have enough base ten blocks!! You can use them in place of beading material.

On the bottom shelf I keep a basket with all my wooden cards 1-9, 10, 20, 100, 200, 1000, ect. Mamma of Many Blessing's husband so kindly cut these blocks of wood for me and I stenciled them in with the correct colors. Next is a learning puzzle, a basket of unix cubes, (Amazon) and our fractions board pieces (Amazon also).

The shelf on the right will eventually be our Science shelf. I haven't acquired enough Montessori Science material yet for it to be a "Science shelf". Right now it holds our odds and ends, a tornado twister, a microscope, and the lifecycle of a butterfly in a basket. All the rest are non Science related.

In the middle is our A through Z object box. This has little pull outs draws that hold our objects. I took a sticky label, cut it in half, and labeled A, B, C, ect. on the individual drawers. Next to that is our "Nature Table" which is not really holding nature stuff right now so I'm not going to bore you with details of the gardening stuff which it IS holding currently. It does have a cool water fall/rock garden. I originally had this at my peace table until I made a peace basket instead.

All my non Montessori materials on the top 3 shelves. Clear cut here. The next two shelves I put things that the kids can easily reach including polished rocks, basket of musical instruments, papers, crayons, basket of little kid books, and a bucket of sand they can play with.