Montessori Self-Care Station
Looking for an Inspired Montessori Self-Care Station for your Toddler?
In this post, I will go over on how I created a Montessori self-care station for my daughter Evelyn (18 month old).
Creating self-care station for your toddler will bring amazing benefits for his/her development. It will create independence in everyday tasks and build their self confidence.
I want to go over 4 other important benefits of creating a self-care station for your toddler.
I think it is very crucial to know first why creating a self care station for toddlers is important. This way you feel more motivated in creating a self-care station with a purpose.
Benefits of Creating a Self-Care station for Toddlers
Having a self-care station for toddlers:
- gives an opportunity for independence and demonstrate healthy behaviors as part of everyday routines.
- At age 8 to 18 months, your child may anticipate and cooperate in daily routines, such as washing hands, blowing nose, or holding a toothbrush with assistance from adults.
- This is a great time to introduce them to daily routines.
- At age 16 to 36 months, your child may participate in healthy care routines with more independence, such as washing hands, blowing nose, brushing teeth, or drinking from a cup.
- Create a self care station!
2. Child uses perceptual information in directing own actions, experiences, and interactions.
- At age 16-36 months, your child coordinates perceptual information and motor actions to participate in daily routines, such as practicing self-care skills.
3. Gives an opportunity to coordinate hand and eye movements to perform actions.
- At age 16-36 months, you child uses hand-eye coordination when participating in routines, to name a few, hair brushing, toothbrushing, hand washing.
- Controlled use of everyday tools such as a toothbrush, hairbrush, and cutlery.
4. Gives your child opportunity to use hands for exploration, play, and daily routines.
- At age 16 to 36 months, your child may now plan ways to use hands for various activities, such as stacking, building, connecting, drawing, painting, and doing self-care skills and routines.
Apartment Space Saving / Self-Care Station
Just a little FYI of our living space. We are renting a 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 730sq.ft apartment in Orange, CA. Which means we have very limited space.
For this reason, we always try to be very minimal when it comes to furniture and what we bring home.
Also, we are avoiding hanging stuff on the walls and making any changes to the apartment since we are here temporarily.
I wanted to point this out because if you’re in a similar situation where you’re renting or living in small spaces, this post is definitely for you because I will be sharing on how I created a Montessori self-care station while living in small spaces.
Hopefully I provide you with some ideas or inspiration for your own.
How to Created a Montessori Self-Care Station
You want to set your little one for success and this is why you’re here to prepare the environment, right?
Okay lets get right in to it!
When you’re ready to create your toddler’s Montessori self-care station you will want to have certain items available to your child.
First, you will need to think about where you are going to set it up.
You can use this station in the bathroom or in their bedroom whichever suits for better success.
We created her station in front of our bathroom storage closet, which is right outside our bathroom. In consideration that we are now potty training her, we thought that her self-care station would be perfect right by her potty area. And it’s working perfectly for us.
STAY ON A LOOK OUT FOR THE “OH CRAP! POTTY TRAINING METHOD Blog Post.
Next, you will need the most basic self-care items for your child.
These are the most basic items your toddler will need to have access to.
Have Access To:
- Hairbrush
- Toothbrush
- Lotion
- Tissues
- Hand Towel
- Mirror at eye level
The items may differ from home to home but these are the most basic self-care items your toddler will use.
Evelyn’s Extra Self-Care Items to Have Access:
Your little one is not expected to be able to use all these items without assistance. They will need your help until they have mastered each skill.
Making this a part of your everyday routine will allow your toddler to become independent in self-care.
Evelyn’s Self-Care Routine is consistent during her bed time routine. However, throughout the day she just loves playing in her self-care station.
The Set Up
As far as furniture, we used her little balance box as her table to place all her little self-self care items. The amazing thing about this little balance box is that we’ve gotten good use of it. We used it as a walker, activity table, snack table, and now her self-care table. I love how light and simple it looks for her little station.
Doesn’t take much space at all so this is a plus, living in small spaces.
To keep her items organized, we used this bamboo organizer. Everything looks so neat when all her self-care items have a home.
We used this Kids Cup from Target to place her toothbrush. We currently aren’t using toothpaste for her but in the future this Kids Cup will be her rinsing cup!
As far as the mirror, we added a small mirror on the wall. You can simply stick the mirror to the wall using the double-sided tape and it is definitely durable.
No need to make holes on the wall. Ya’ll know how convenient this is when you are renting.
I also hung a hand towel using a Command Adjustable Repositionable Hooks. This hand towel is used for drying her hands after hand washing but can also be used for any spills she makes in that area.
And about her other extra items, we only have a bow and her sunglasses. Evelyn really dislikes hair clips and just anything on her hair. However, since we added her bow in her self-care station, we noticed that she seems more interested in them. She now tries to put her down hair clips!
Her little self-care station looks so cute and neat, and we LOVE IT and most importantly Evelyn has been LOVING IT the MOST!
Few Amazon Items from Evelyn’s Self-Care Station
Conclusion
With that being said, crating a self care station for your toddler will benefit him/her physical well-being. Also, remember that children’s physical well-being depends on a number of factors, including their knowledge and use of safe, healthy behaviors and routines.
For example, toddlers are learning how to use a toothbrush with adult guidance. As preschoolers become more coordinated, they can add toothpaste to their own toothbrush.
With appropriate support all children can achieve strong outcomes in their perceptual, motor, and physical development.
I hope this post helped give you some ideas or inspiration on how to Montessori your own self-care station for your toddler.
Do you have any ideas or topics I missed? I would love to hear in the comments below.
More Montessori Inspired!