Our Montessori Homeschool Preschool Room

Our Montessori Homeschool Preschool room is finally finished! Actually, that’s not a true. A good Montessori environment is never truly finished, because it should always be changing to follow the needs of the children it serves. BUT, the bones of the room are finished and exactly what my 4.5-year-old and almost 3-year-old need right now.

My husband built all of our shelves and tables, but you can get beautiful options for your own home from Sprout Kids — 10% off with my referral link! The work mats we use are actually these kitchen rugs, but they’re far cheaper in Ikea stores.

Our homeschool room is set up the way you would typically find a regular Montessori classroom, with separate shelves/sections for language, geography/science/cultural, sensorial, math, art, and practical life. We have a few tables set up around the room while leaving plenty of floor space for work rugs, and the flow of the room works well for us.

While most Montessori classrooms shelves are set up in order from easiest to most difficult, most concrete to most abstract, I set up our shelves a bit differently. Our shelves are set up with works on different shelves according to how easy they are to carry to the table and back — there is some attention paid to the order they would be presented, but the ease of carrying is my primary focus. I also will reorder the works on the shelf to make sure my youngest daughter has a direct line of sight to the works that are especially for her — certain types of containers can be difficult for her to see into when they are on the top shelf, so I reserve those spaces for my oldest daughter’s materials.

Let’s look at each section one by one, and I will share what materials are currently available for my 4.5-year-old and almost 3-year-old daughters!

Language

Our language shelves currently have a slight bird-theme along with plenty of reading and writing materials. The works on this shelf include Backyard Bird Identification Cards, cards for labeling the environment, command cards, backyard birds object-to-picture matching, opposite cards, rhyming cards, a salt tray, sandpaper letters, and the movable alphabet.

I found this table by the side of the road and knew it would be perfect for our Montessori pink series, blue series, and green series cards, pink series sentence strips, sight word cards, and blue series word lists.

I also rescued this old desk from the side of the road with full intentions of refinishing it, but I haven’t quite gotten around to it yet. For now, it serves as our writing materials shelf — with extra command strips for writing commands, book-making materials, clipboards, pencils, notebooks, and dry erase boards.

Geography/Cultural/Science/Themed Studies

This catch-all shelf is also part of our language section, as many of the materials in it contain language elements. Currently on the shelf, we have a Montessori continent globe, Oceans Nomenclature cards, a chart of butterflies, butterfly picture matching, Types of Butterflies 3-part cards, butterfly life cycle cards with toob figures, parts of a butterfly cards, a felt human body, Continents First Letter Sound Clip Cards, Continent Syllable Counting Clip Cards, and a world bank.

Sensorial

Next is our Sensorial section! We have a pink tower, pattern matching coins, color box 2, the knobbed cylinders with a blindfold, texture matching, handbells, and a felt musical notation work. Not pictured: the red rods, on the end of the previous shelf.

Math

Math is directly related to sensorial, so I’ve placed that shelf in the same little nook. We currently have a number play felt board work, the sandpaper numbers, some bead bar number cards, the bead stair with hanger, a box full of bead bars, a hundred board, the introduction to the decimal system with felt mat, the addition strip board, a wooden fraction circle, and the golden bead material (the “bank”).

Art

I am so excited to have such a large art shelf in our new homeschool preschool room! To keep myself from getting bogged down with the risk of mess, I put down plastic floor protectors in this section so the carpet at least won’t get damaged. On the top of our art shelf, we have a paper holder containing all of the paper refills for the other works, a bucket full of paintbrushes to be put on individual trays as needed, a pencil sharpening work, colored pencils, and a play dough tray with bead bar play dough mats. We also have a bleeding tissue paper work, a pasting work, CVC word stamping cards, a hole punching work, and a bead bar book making work. There is a large easel and a bin full of extra paper for cutting as well.

Wet Practical Life

I also made sure to put our water works in the same area as the floor protectors so spills are easily wiped up! Our homeschool preschool room is in the attic, so there’s no sink up here. The source of water for all our water works is that water dispenser! I put a bucket underneath to catch any drips. The water works we currently have available are sponge water transfer, whisking, basting water transfer, and water pouring to the line. None of the water work trays actually have water in them while they’re sitting on the shelf. The child must carry the tray to the table, take the container that holds the water (bowl, pitcher, etc) to the water dispenser to fill it, then return to the table and use the work. When she’s finished, she dumps the water into the bucket, then returns the tray to the shelf dry.

Dry Practical Life

Our non-wet practical life works are on the same shelf, but further down as they don’t need to be over the plastic floor protector area. We have a spooning transfer work, nuts and bolts board, sewing work, rice pouring with a funnel, horizontal ring post, screwdriver board, tweezer posting work, unlocking work, a peg board, and a geoboard with shape templates.

The corner next to that shelf has some washcloths for wiping up spills, child-sized cleaning tools, drying racks for art work, a hanging drying rack for wet washcloths, and a table.

Circle Area

There’s a long radiator along one wall of our homeschool preschool room, so we can’t put shelves there. Instead, this is where we set up our Circle Time area. You can read more about what we do at Circle Time HERE.

Reading Nook

Our reading nook is right across from our language area in the only area of natural light — the single attic window! I had my husband build this bookcase with a forward-facing section on top, then we went crazy making the coziest reading nook we could imagine. My favorite part — those posters and the twinkle lights!