Sunny Gault
While it just makes sense, the more children you have, the larger your budget needs to become. But is that necessarily true when raising a Montessori, baby? I'm Sunny with New Mommy Media. And I'm joined here with Simone Davies. She's a best-selling author and a Montessori educator, Simone. Thanks for being with us today.

Simone Davies
Thank you so much, Sunny, I'm looking forward to talking with you.

Sunny Gault
Well, I know Simone, when I first became a mom, a million years ago, now, I'm just kidding. But about almost 11 years ago, had my first son, I kind of had sticker shock, right, I would walk into these stores. And I would be like to say what, like the, you know, the shirt is half the size, no, even less half the size of my shirt, and you want how much money for that. But this applies not to just clothes, but toys, all this kind of stuff. And that quickly adds up. And then the more children you have, you know, it's like your budget, you know, sometimes it's kind of through the roof. And so I want to talk a little bit about that when it comes to Montessori. You know, people may think that this costs a lot of money does, you know, having, you know, in practicing Montessori with your family with your children doesn't have to be expensive.

Simone Davies
Not at all. And I think that this is a misconception because you see these beautiful Montessori spaces on Instagram and things like that. So you think, oh, that's gonna cost a lot of money, and I need that exact shelf. But actually, you can use repurpose materials that you have in your own home. So if you've ever had, you know, a shelf that stood up, you can maybe lay it down so that you could use the same shelf again. So reuse things whenever you can, you can get things from a secondhand store, because wooden toys actually really keep their life well. And so if you look in secondhand stores, you can pick up things there, you could share it with the toy libraries, or in your neighborhood, you could share things so you could swap with friends, or my child's really into puzzles. And you could change it that way. In the first year. In particular, though, the most important thing for your baby is you, you know, so well a rich source of language. So you don't need to buy anything for that. You can sing songs, you can read poetry, you can just have simple conversation with a baby you buy, the baby doesn't talk, if you hold the baby out in front of you and you poke your tongue up. Even a baby that's only two weeks old will try and open their mouth and poke their tongue back out at you. And then you poke their tongue out again. And they try and like we just had a conversation, they learned that I for us. So you don't just need these pretty materials, I really feel like Montessori is a lot how we respect the child and how we follow the child and not that we need to buy all the things

Sunny Gault
makes sense. And I know in a previous video that we did, you talked about having a mirror. And of course, like that makes so much sense. Like you know, I don't know, I see these videos online of like kids looking in a mirror or animals looking at a mirror. And we don't think of that as a big thing. But I mean, there, it's obviously reflecting them and they're seeing what they're doing. And I would think that a lot of learning happens with very simple things, whether it's a stand up kind of knee or or it's a mirror that they hold or something simple like that,

Simone Davies
yeah, if you've always maybe had a vertical mirror for yourself, you could just lie down and make it horizontal for the baby. So again, repurposing what you already have, and then it will grow with your child as they become a toddler, you can then stand up at mirror by the front door, so they can check themselves to see if they, you know, Got Milk on their, maybe on their moustache, and they need to wipe it down. So there's a nice box of tissues that they're ready for them to be able to wipe their mouths as well.

Sunny Gault
Yeah, and these, these are column toys, or whatever. But these items are activities and things. They're they're timeless, really, right. It's not like it's going to go out of style. So I think from a practical standpoint, from a parenting standpoint, and we're talking about money and budgets and stuff like that, that it can be passed down. If you have other kids and they're practicing math Montessori, I'm thinking you're gonna save money because, you know, nowadays we're like, we buy a toy, and it's got some sort of logo or something, or it's a it's a character of something. And you know, that's out of fashion or out of style, within six months, you know, you can't even pass it down, like my next kid isn't even going to care about that. But I think the items that we're talking about with Montessori, they are timeless,

Simone Davies
yeah, they're timeless, they're beautiful. They're well made, usually. So I'd rather buy less things and a few good quality things if I'm going to buy things, but you can DIY things, for example, as well as I'm now with the internet, you know, you can pretty much make anything, there's these beautiful, bold trackers for toddlers. And you know, you can find instructions how to, if you can saw some wood, you can actually make one yourself. Or if you want to make one of these object permanence boxes, you can just use a shoebox and a ball and improvise that way. So you just have to, you're only limited by your creativity, really, I mean, also, the cheapest way to do Montessori is to head outside and be the baby you know, to take them out to the market with you. And as you're handing over the fruit that you're buying, you know, you can name the fruit and you can smell it together and give them real-life experiences and involve them in our daily life. They're going to learn so much from those as well.

Sunny Gault
Yeah, yeah. It's just experiencing life together. That's really what you're doing. You know, just it's, there's so much just to learn that, you know, everyday life. So, Simone, thanks so much for being with us today. This is Simone's book if you guys want to check it out. It's called the Montessori baby and you You can find it online it is available on Amazon. For those of you guys who love Amazon, be sure to head on over to our website, which is newmommymedia.com. We've got more great videos like this. We have lots of podcast episodes, blog posts. Pretty much anything that you need for raising your kid in those early days is where real moms talk about real life.