If you found this site reading mid-pregnancy, or at 3am with a tiny human breathing softly against your chest, you are exactly who I’m building it for. I grew up with Montessori principles, and reading The Montessori Baby by Simone Davies and Junnifa Uzodike has helped guide me through the specifics as I prepare for our own baby this summer. It’s not only Montessori, though. Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff has shaped just as much of my thinking. Her reporting on ancient parenting cultures backs up the evidence behind babywearing, and shows how children can be brought into chores and the rhythm of household life from a very young age. Real-life examples with real babies, not theory. Most of what’s on this site started as notes to myself. I’m sharing them in case they save you a search.
The window we underestimate
Every article I have read this pregnancy on newborn development uses the same phrase: “they mostly just eat and sleep.” Technically true. People call those first three months the fourth trimester for a reason. Babies are still finishing on the outside what they started on the inside, regulating temperature, building circadian rhythm, learning that the world is a safe place to land. But each article leaves out the part that has changed how I think about that window entirely: the brain triples in volume during the first year. The visual system is completely undeveloped at birth. Spatial reasoning, attachment patterns, even the early scaffolding of language. All of it begins long before babies look like they’re doing anything at all.
That’s the window we underestimate. And it’s the one Montessori built her whole method around.
What “lesson plan” actually means here
I’m not talking about flashcards. I’m not talking about a curriculum.
A lesson plan, the way I mean it, is a thoughtful environment. It borrows from Montessori and from the research on early STEM play and brain development. It’s a daily rhythm. It’s hours of skin-to-skin contact in the first weeks, while the baby’s nervous system learns what safe feels like. It’s wearing the baby in a soft carrier strapped to your chest, so they move with you instead of staring at the inside of a stroller. It’s tummy time, started in the first week home and built up minute by minute, multiple times a day. It’s a high-contrast card propped where they can study it in the first weeks, then a wooden rattle they can actually grasp, then an object-permanence box once they start looking for what’s gone. It’s stacking cups and a shape sorter when fine motor and spatial reasoning start to click. It’s narration during a diaper change. It’s the choice to put the spoon in the baby’s hand instead of in their mouth, even when it’s faster.
“Never do for a child what he can do for himself.”
Maria Montessori
What you’ll find on this site
I’m doing the research so you can skim the conclusions. Here’s what’s waiting for you:
- The blog. Honest notes from where I am, plus the research I’ve actually found useful. Short posts on what’s going on at each stage from 0 to 24 months, and the small changes at home that help.
- A free 7-stage development guide. The same plan I’m using to set up our home, stage by stage from newborn to two years. Free with an account. No credit card needed.
- A milestone tracker. Check off what you spot, sorted by stage. Handy on the slow weeks when it feels like nothing is happening, and on the days when a lot is.
- Honesty. No affiliate links, no brand deals, no pretending to be a doctor. When I don’t know something yet, I say so.
If that sounds like the kind of internet corner you’ve been looking for, welcome. Go drink some water. The baby is on the way.