We recently added a Montessori shelf to our living room and it has been such a great addition to our home. One of our goals right now is to encourage our kids to play independently. I love Montessori-inspired play because it’s at the child’s level and everything is accessible to them all the time. You’re supposed to rotate the toys, which I already knew makes them more appealing to our children. Instead of swapping the whole shelf I have been doing 1-2 toys at a time and they always notice and are most excited about the newer toys that appear. I love leaving them little surprises to discover.
I also love the emphasis on toys that encourage open and imaginary play. It’s so important to us to teach our children to be creative, to use their imaginations and to make up their own games and stories.
In this post I’ll share all the toys that are currently on our shelf. I bought our shelf from Etsy (here’s a more budget friendly option from Amazon). If you are handy, it could be a fun DIY as well.
Grapat Mandala. I saw a set of these at my friend’s house and fell completely in love with it. I bought a lot of pieces from this Etsy shop. I also added some pieces that I painted myself to fill out the rainbow.The pieces I painted are the stars, the coins, the green trees and yellow cones. It brought me so much joy to put this together for the girls. Here’s a link to the storage tray as well.
This toy is full of possibilities… they can be used for anything. Our kids are always making patterns with them across the floor, sorting them, pretending they are food to cook with and more. Selfishly, it’s my favorite toy to put away because I love organizing the rainbow colors.
Dolls. I’ve been collecting dolls since wayyy before I became a mom, they are my favorite. I love them. A few small brands I love are Hazel Village (the two diverse dolls above are from them), Bla Bla Kids, Cuddle and Kind, Wildflower Liberty League. Adding diverse dolls to our collection has been so important.
We always learned in our adoption classes to get dolls that look like our kids, but now that we have a big collection of dolls with white hair we’ve been shifting our focus to adding more diversity to our collection.
Lacing shoe. I love Melissa and Doug toys and this is our current favorite. Nova plays with it all the time since she is currently learning to tie her shoes.
Wooden play phone. This was a gift and it’s s fascinating to realize our kids wouldn’t even know this was a phone if we didn’t explain it to them. It’s a piece of my childhood for them, I guess. Here’s one from Target. Here’s a more rustic option.
Wooden people. I love wooden people. So far I have not painted them. I love these as a painted option– so beautiful.
Wooden tree set. I love wood trees. I picked these up recently from Target and I also love this raw wood set. These would be great for a DIY, maybe to do all four seasons?
Calico critters. We always find a spot for these because they are our favorite and have been for years. Here’s a link to the bus, the hedgehog family, the grandparents set, bunny family, panda family and monkey family.
Wooden blocks. I love wood blocks and honestly believe they are the number one best toy to collect. Here are a few Etsy shops that sell wood blocks, here and here. Here’s our favorite Melissa & Doug set. We also love lincoln logs.
I’ll be sure to share more updates in the future as we swap the toys out. So far it’s been a great addition and something our kids are getting a lot of play out of. 🙂 Hope your weekend is relaxing and fun! xx. Elsie
