Ideas for montessori style organization

Does any of you have a toy organizer like this at your home? Does this

Cindy Kandolf...

Not exactly. Our older son had assorted plastic boxes on bookshelves.
Our younger son now has one of these doohickeys from Ikea:

This photo shows all the boxes the same size, but in fact there are
three different sizes, and Robert has at least one of each.

Chookie...

As a matter of fact yes, but much less hideous:

oreId=18&langId=-26&productId=47813

Different configurations and drawer depths are available.

Jeanne...

No. we have a mix of storage containers. Big rubbermaid containers to
hold legos, wooden blocks or train parts (one container for each). A
plastic three drawer unit for pencils and pens, blank paper and color
paper. Simple bookcase (or cabinet) that held playdoh, teacup set and
other little toys. I tried putting each of these on it own tray (ala
montessori) but then the kids wanted to play with the trays...

work well? Do your kids take one container at a time and play with it

Cindy Kandolf...

Our systems have worked well. The Ikea piece looks neater, but from a
practical point of view both have worked pretty much the same.

Cindy Kandolf...

Nope. Though they only take out what they're playing with. It's just
that sometimes, when you're six, you want to build (Lego box) a
restaurant (toy food and dishes box) and you need to make menus for it
(art box) and then you decide it's going to have a drive-through (car
box)...

And then when you're done with that, you get out your toy farm animals
before you remember to clean up the restaurant.

Jeanne...

I think one reason why we didn't go with this was that all the
containers are small and things just didn't fit into them (paintbrushes,
bottles of paint, puzzles, paper).

and put it back in place? My kid does that at her montessori so I want

Cindy Kandolf...

This part, they do. With prompting, of course. Okay, a bit more than
prompting some nights, but it does get done.

Chookie...

Um, no. DS2 (11mo) likes reaching in and flinging the toys out! But it is
still less messy than open shelving and the boxes are good for multi-part toys
like blocks.

to implement the same kinda system at home (thereby getting rid of the
chaotic toybox).

Cindy Kandolf...

In my experience, toyboxes are okay for a relatively small number of
relatively large toys. The "toybox" we have for the outdoor toys, for
instance, works very well. (It's actually one of those plastic chests
for storing patio furniture cushions in. Long enough for baseball
bats, deep enough for plastic backhoes, and weatherproof.) But when
you start talking about Lego bricks, or Matchbox cars, or Barbie
shoes, or plastic food, or whatever toy with 1000 nearly microscopic
pieces your kid is in love with this month, well, a big toybox just
doesn't cut it. Books, board games, and puzzles only crawl into toy
boxes to die. Shelves and smaller containers are much better, both
for getting out toys and cleaning them up.

One thing I notice about the toy storage shelves you linked to is that
the boxes are all the same size. Looking at your daughter's toys, do
you think that will work?

(Oh, and don't feel like a failure if your daughter doesn't bring her
good Montessori habits home with her. It never seems to work that
way! She'll just have to learn it at home, too.)

- Cindy Kandolf, mamma to Kenneth (12) and Robert (6)
cindy@nethelp.no ****** Bærum, Norway
Bilingual Families Web Page:

Chookie...

Getting rid of the toybox is a good idea -- they are really only good for
large things, like sporting equipment.

Bear in mind that something slathered in Disney decals won't be hip once DD is
past 8 or so. My Ikea unit will still be fine when DS1 is 16.

toto...

My dil has one like that, but I can't say that my dgs or dgd take out
one toy at a time and put them back as kids in Montessori schools do.

We have drawers at our house and while it helps a bit with organizing,
it isn't always successful in terms of clean up with dgd. (dgs is two
and autistic and we haven't had him putting away toys yet).

You can also do this using bookshelves with baskets for each toy, btw.

dkhedmo...

I'm pretty sure that storage system would only assist my 2yo in making
more of a mess, with each container conveniently at hand to dump, one
after the other, into a big pile... Or into the back of a dump truck to
drive to another part of the hosue and dump it there... no Montessori
activity around here...

-Karen, wading through a pretty deep pile by dinner time-

Caledonia...

We use old entertainment stands (those kind that the TV was to sit on
top of, with subdivided little shelves in the base for other electric
components/tapes) and bookcases. The little bin idea didn't really
work, as for this kind of thing (a) I couldn't figure out what we'd use
it for when the kids were older, and (b) my kids couldn't *really* see
inside of each bin.

We have plastic shoeboxes -- no lids -- with different toys in each
(tinkertoys, little people plastic things, musical instrument-type
stuff), and most of these are interspersed when playing. Actually, we
have a big block wooden box, and the block houses become embellished
with the little people, the tinkertoy, the cars, and whathaveyou.

The main thing I took away from DD1's Montessori environment was that
our toys should be accessible/visible, and *limited*. (Her classroom
seemed sparse, compared to the amount of toys we've acquired) In other
words, we rotate toys a lot (about bi-weekly) -- the bins are stored in
a closet, and some old standbys never get put back (the big blocks),
but a lot of the not-so-old standbys do (playfood, cash register,
wooden train set, the matchbox cars). Having everything out was
overwhelming for her (and me) -- having fewer things seems to work
better. We (DD1, DD2, and I) put away toys at the end of the day
(unless there's a city being built, or a rollercoaster apparatus); our
toys aren't discrete 'works' with only one way to do them (in fact,
most of our stuff is of the 'mix it together and see what happens'
variety), so the Montessori approach didn't really fit with our stuff.

Jeanne...

Very very few parents I know have been able to implement this system at
home. The only ones I know have been Montessori teachers. My SIL has
trays with toys on them which her son has to take one at a time and then
put it back before getting another one. The failure often comes when a
friend visits. But at least her son knows where to put the toys, so
even if he doesn't follow the "put it back before getting another one"
it's pretty easey to clean up afterwards.

Donna Metler...

My problem with the "Getting out only one toy" method is that it tends to
stifle creative play to some degree. My daughter's care bears drive the

Banty...

Yep. And with my son, if he would have to dismantle all his little scenarios
with cars and legos and stuff, with little buildings and roads, every time he
was done, his creative play most definately would had been stifled.

I tried the "put away what you've played with" and maintained it to some extent
as a toddler, but when he got to theh point where I saw it meant destroying what
he had built with imagination and was looking forward to getting back to the
next day, I dropped that effort. Maybe that figures into why he's a messy 13
year old, but it also figures into why he's developed into such a model hobbyist
that he's showing his pieces in shows.

He didn't do all that well in his Montessori kinder, BTW - the teachers
(instructors?) would all tell me "he has trouble choosing work". Maybe it was
just the wrong kind of structure for him.

alphabet truck, swing on the fisher price little people swing and ride the
horses, and live in caves formed by putting board books on their edges
tent-style, and it's all unprompted play. As she gets older, she's not
dumping everything out anymore randomly-she knows where things are and how
to get them, but she definitely combines pieces. We have bookshelves with
baskets for small toys, and "parking places" for bigger ones, and everything
is labeled where it goes, and she's starting to get good at "Let's pick up
all the legos and put them in the lego box", although at 18 months she's not
good at LEAVING them away if she gets distracted while picking up.

Jeanne...

I just realized that there is also a difference between a Montessori
classroom and our homes. Several people have written in about how the
one toy at a time method stifles creative play. I agree.

I remember now that DD objected strongly to me saying "toy" referring to
the Montessori classroom *material*. So, there is a definite difference
between a child's toys (e.g., little people, trains, blocks) and the
classroom material (e.g., pink tower, pitcher and cup, napkin, etc.). I
wonder if that's why children tend to ignore the one-at-a-time "rule"
for toys. It really doesn't make much sense to them.

dragonlady...

Personally, I enjoyed the creative play they got into with MORE than one
toy out: the big blocks to build roads, the smaller ones enclosures,
the farm and zoo sets to create a zoo, and the playmobile people to walk
around admiring the zoo, for example.

enigma...

i sometimes wish Boo understood playing...
lee

cailleach...

What does Boo like to do?

Adam does play, but with hindsight his play was always a bit limited
compared to other little kids'. He would *only* play with one toy at a
time, he had to be shown exactly what to do with any toy, and he would
always play with it in the same way. I felt almost shocked to see a
friend's daughter just take the stacking cups and hang them onto the
shape sorter! Adam would stack the cups very efficiently, or poke
shapes into the sorter, but he'd never mix the two games. He does mix
games now and make up games; I find weird arrangements of stuff laid
out on his bedroom floor.

All the best,

Cailleach

Penny Gaines...

We had one which was similar, and the big problem was that
the baskets were quite small: it looks like the one
that was linked to also has quite small baskets. So we could
only get a few bits of brio or duplo etc in each box.

I think now my kids are older, it would actually work better
then when they were little. However, us adults have taken
over the baskets, so that's no good for the kids :-).