Montessori Spaces in an Apartment: Living Room

In November, we moved to an 3 bedroom apartment from our house, and the amount of space we had shrunk. I still wanted to maintain (and actually expand!) on the areas we established for our children's work, as well as give them access to specific things to aid in their independence. 

The most prominent area in our home is our living room. This is where we participate in most aspects of our family life, but it is also the area where I homeschool our son as well as where he plays. We needed to streamline the space as much as possible while still offering the children enough shelving and open area to complete their work. We initially had cube shelving which worked well until I wanted to put out specific materials on trays for my son to complete. I started doing trays when he was close to 3 years old. I tried before that age and he would throw the objects everywhere, so it was best we did not do any tray activities until he was a little older. 

Our shelving started out looking like this:

It was messy. The trays stuck out. I hated how it looked. I found the area not appealing at all and even though my son would do some of the work, it was not often and he would often leave things on the shelves untouched. When we got some money, we changed his main shelving to this:

This is two IKEA Trofast shelves. They fit all of the trays perfectly and it looks really neat. I was able to place the baby's toys on the far right side and separate my son's works by subject while also keeping his open-ended toys on the same shelf on the far left side. The shelf is wide and can fit larger objects on top. I love how it looks. We also have the small bookcase on the right of the shelf that allows the books to show their front covers. I love this clean look.

I will show the rest of our areas in the upcoming blogs, particularly how we have made certain areas of home accessible to our children to give them as much independence as possible.