Forest Montessori

Montessori From Birth

  • Email

Archives for March 2019

Montessori at 1 Month Highlights

by

My parents left at Week 5, thank you so much mum and dad for all your help :-* This was the month we settled down into our rhythms and routines as a family of 3. Some Montessori reminders we followed:

Last day with mum and dad at Week 5
  • Do not disturb while she is concentrating.
  • She spent majority of her awake time on the floor/ tummy.
  • We connected during personal cares.
  • She enjoyed tummy time every time she woke up from sleep, about 4-5 times a day.
  • I feed her on demand. Montessori point of view is that it shapes the perception of the child for what the world is and how their needs will continue to be meet (defines if they become optimistic or pessimistic in life).
  • No use of pacifiers as it teaches the child oral gratification, that is food is solution to all discomfort and leads to binge eating as adults. Probably the hardest thing for me was to not give her a pacifier. Week 6 being the hardest where she cluster feed for hours at end every day and spewed out most of it anyways! In hindsight it was worth it cause her language development/ babbling is amusing!
  • Minimal or no use of containers, such as swings, walkers, rockers etc. We do use baby wearing for day sleeps and pram for walks.
Did I mention, she is expressive?

Highlights

  • Babbles- Anika started babbling at week 6 and we spent majority of time during caregiving ‘talking’. She would often stop suddenly while feeding, smile, chat for a bit and go back to feeding. Using the same sounds as she would use “aghe” being the favourite got me lots of babbles back. I know many Montessorians believe that child language should not be used but this is what she enjoyed the most and I followed her lead.

Anika was up usually 3-4 times in a day for an hour and a bit each time. We divided this as:

Morning routine of outdoor time cause trees make the best mobile
Afternoon routine of concentrating on the mobiles
Evening routine of massage followed by bath
Night time routine of reading books, babbles and cuddles

PS- Anika disliked bath time in her baby bathtub. So we use the adult bath tub filled 2 inches of water, use a thick towel underneath for support and a small cloth on top to keep her warm. From feeling constricted and controlled in the small bath to splashing, wriggling and loving bath time now. I could not recommend this set-up enough. Thank you Kylie@howwemontessori.com

Materials that we have loved

Montessori Visual Mobiles

Octahedron mobile

The Wonderful Things You Will Be

Giraffes Can’t Dance

Love You Forever

Life with a newborn and establishing the day-night circadian rhythm

by


During pregnancy, I read/ listened to every book I could find about- Montessori, RIE, Forest school, Attachment parenting, Unconditional parenting, Conscious Parenting and off course all the years as a teacher I was suppose to ace this from Day.1! But during the first 3 weeks, I often found myself googling “when does it get easier with a newborn.” The general consensus was 3 months! Well, I must say it gets easier as soon as the sleep is KIND OF sorted!

SLEEP…Luckily it only took us 3 weeks for Anika to work out the day and night circadian rhythm. Here are some things that worked for us:

  • Form bedtime routines- we had a massage, bath, reading, feeding as our night time routine.
  • Set the environment- Anika slept in the sunlit rooms (or in my sling) with noise during the day and night was silent and dark except the himalayan salt lamp that she loved looking at.
  • Understanding the signs for hunger- Anika would root (open mouth move head from left to right) every 2 hours in sleep when hungry. If not feed within 2 minutes of this she would start crying and be wide awake for an hour after. Since we co-slept, any movement she did would automatically wake me up. I would immediately feed her and thus she never really woke up.
  • Nappy changing- was done on my lap (not ideal, I know but anything for sleep!) or the startle reflex would wake her up from her half sleep to fully awake. I used changing cloths on my lap as cover, dressed her in night gowns to make it easy for me and kept lots of sanitizer and the nappy bin handy.
  • If awake- I would only use whispering voices and try and put her to bed immediately. No mobiles and no playtime was encouraged.

After week.3 she still woke up every 2 hours to feed but mostly went back to sleep right away. The only drawback to above was she would not burp in her sleep so was more prone to being gassy early in the morning. But a tummy massage fixed that for us. We all do it differently. While I dont feel like a mama zombie anymore, we still have a long way to go for our day sleep rhythm. This is what worked for us and hope it helps you. Would love to hear how you did this…