1 Year of Blogging Celebration Ends

Thank you to our wonderful readers that participated in our 1 Year Anniversary of Blogging Celebration!  What a ride these past 5 weeks have been!  We’ve really enjoyed learning why you chose Montessori, hearing about your challenges, and re-visiting our favourite posts with you.  We wish we could have offered a giveaway to all of you as you each give us so much joy and encouragement with your feedback, comments, and questions.  Keep it coming!!!  We’d love to see more engagement on the blog in our second year of blogging as we love hearing from you!

Thank you so much for sharing our blog with others!  We love sharing our knowledge and experience (that’s why we started this blog!) and we want to help more people come to understand and implement Montessori in their own homes and relationships with children.  Our blog subscriber list, readership, and facebook likes all increased during this giveaway celebration.  We warmly welcome all our new readers!  Here are some of the posts that you said were your favourites:

The Toilet Learning Series – Specifically The Standing Diaper Change   

Bedroom Tour and Setting up the Home: The Bedroom 

Prepare the Environment for Your Toddler’s Independence 

So go check them out if you’re new to the blog!

We also want to say congratulations again to all our winners!

Congratulations to Crystal G.. on winning the 5 Pack of Toys from Beginning Montessori!

Congratulations to Diara D. on winning the signed copy of The Joyful Child by Susan M. Stephenson (Michael Olaf)!

 

Congratulations to Danielle F. on winning the $50 Gift Certificate to Montessori Services/ For Small Hands!

Congratulations to K on winning the Montessori Apron from Handmade Montessori!   

Congratulations to Jamie on winning the Montessori Placemat from How We Montessori Shop!

Congratulations to Kathy D. on winning the Home Consultation from Aid to Life Education!

Please go support these wonderful sponsors for our 1 Year Anniversary Celebration!!!  We greatly appreciate their support for our blog and their commitment to the Montessori community.

We have some exciting posts planned to share with you in the coming weeks, so we hope you’ll stay with us for another year!

From the Montessori Moms: Carrie, Christie, Rubi, Tomoko, and Yvonne

Foto Friday: Flashback

Flashback!  A. enjoying her 5 Pack of Beginning Montessori Materials

It’s not too late!  Enter to WIN your own 5 Pack of Beginning Montessori Materials!  Celebrate the 1 Year Anniversary of our blog!

1 Month: Bell Rattle  3 Months: Small Grasping Beads 4 Months: Interlocking Discs  5 Months: Ball Cylinder  6 Months: Bell Cylinder  

 

Happy 1st Anniversary! Beginning Montessori Giveaway!

We’ve just about reached the end of our 1st Anniversary of Blogging Celebration.  It has been such a joy to share with you our favourite Montessori resources and products.  It has been a lot of fun reading your responses as you explore Montessori further.  And our readership continues to grow!  Thank you for following our blog!  Thank you for sharing our blog with others!  If you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to enter to win a signed copy of The Joyful Child up on our blog until Tuesday, September 16 at 11:59PST.

As our 6th and final giveaway we are offering up a Five Pack of Toys from Beginning Montessori!  This pack makes the perfect set of toys to get started with Montessori.  I am a little biased about these toys as my husband makes them.  This company was born right out of my AtoI Montessori training.  As the course transformed me and how I saw infants, purchasing baby shower gifts became increasingly difficult.  During our training we made many materials and I asked my husband to help me make the bell rattle.  We had leftover dowel so my husband asked if any of the other women from my course would like a bell rattle.  Well, the orders flew in!  My husband then came to the training centre and checked out the materials telling me he could make many of the items.  He was just as excited as I was!  He grew up around wood crafting as his parents made wooden toys and he’s had lots of advice along the way as we developed our products.  With his ability to make the toys and my Montessori trained eye for detail, with special attention for how it would aid a young child’s development, we developed our product line to include:

        

Amongst other materials which you can check out on our website.  Since we’ve observed our daughter A. use these toys, we’ve tweaked a couple of them but most were already perfect.  It has been such a joy for me to see A. use these materials!  It has been such a joy for me to see all of the Montessori Moms babies use these toys!  (From top to bottom you can see Christie’s sons R. and P.. my daughter A. with the interlocking discs, and Tomoko’s daughters M. and E.)  It continues to be such a joy for me to see many, many babies enjoy these toys.  I know at a deeper level how much the child is gaining through their usage of these toys so it just delights me!  You can read a short description of each material on the website and in addition, each toy comes with a product card describing the purpose and usage of each toy.  If you’re looking for cleaning information, please check our facebook page note on cleaning our materials.

This Five Pack of Montessori Baby Toys was designed to be a perfect baby shower or first gift for the child.  The cost of the five pack is $48 and the giveaway includes free, international shipping.  A few of the toys can start to be enjoyed within the first months of the child’s life.  They will aid the child’s development, and continue to be enjoyed, throughout the child’s first year.  These toys will also last for multiple children and in infant communities.  They are great quality and beautifully made.  They make great teething toys and you can be sure they are safe to be mouthed on by an infant as they are hand-made with natural materials.  We hope you will enjoy them as much as we do!

To enter leave a comment on our blog telling us: What is your favourite post from the Montessori Moms Blog from our First Year of Blogging?  Then click the link to enter a Rafflecopter giveaway and click the green button on the Rafflecopter form telling us “I commented!”  There are also lots of additional ways to enter to get your name in multiple times.  If you haven’t used Rafflecopter before it’s very easy to do so by just following the instructions.  You can also watch this quick video to help you learn. (Sorry it has to be a form using the link.  It still works!)

The giveaway will close on Monday, September 22 at 11:59PST.  Winner must respond within 48 hours of being contacted.  Good luck!  The giveaway is now closed.  Congratulations to Crystal G. on winning the 5 Pack of Beginning Montessori Toys!

Congratulations to our Winner!

Thank you for all your support!  This blog is off to a great start with 38 WordPress followers and 255 Facebook likes!  With views from 50 countries!  We’ve only been up and running for two weeks!  Amazing!

Thank you for all your comments!  It was a bit overwhelming to receive so much interest and so many ideas of what you’d like to hear about.  Each of you have your own situation you’re coming from but there were some definite themes such as an age by age guide, how to set up your homes, how to make materials or find them (especially on a budget), real life with the low bed, and how to incorporate the Montessori philosophy into your daily lives.  We look forward to sharing our stories with you in the coming months (or years from all the comments!).  Some of you had specific questions.  Please ask these on our facebook page so we can get a conversation going about those topics.  They were really great!  Please be patient with us responding to those comments as we’re getting ready to go back to school/work.

There were over 100 entries for our giveaway from Beginning Montessori for a Five Pack of Toys.  The lucky winner is Kristy McCarthy!  Congratulations!  We hope your child or someone you pass this along to greatly enjoys the toys.