Begin As You Intend To Go On

It’s been said, “begin as you mean to go on”, but when you have a new baby, advertisement bombards you with all the “needs” to purchase. And after a few weeks, you wonder - what can I do to engage my baby? What should wake times look like? How can I support their visual development? Besides my carrier, one of my newborn essentials this time around was the Montessori mobile set. I knew I wanted my babies to “go on” in an atmosphere of beauty, so I began with the Munari mobile. Simple and beautiful beside the lounge window, every day I watched my baby become fascinated with the contrasting shapes above him. As babies’ minds absorb from their environment, I could see how the Montessori mobiles provided beauty for my newborn to enjoy as he developed. 

In the first few months, mobiles are the main Montessori material used to support a baby’s visual development to track, focus, develop concentration and provide a point of reference and adaptability. The four Montessori mobiles are each designed to uniquely build upon each other. Starting with the Munari Mobile: high contrast, black and white, with a glass sphere designed to help your baby’s vision focus. The Octahedron Mobile is a fascinating reflective mobile of the primary colours, which enables your baby to differentiate between colours as they watch the octahedra above. The Gobbi Mobile is a gradation of a single colour in 5 shades, enabling your baby to continue to distinguish colour and shade differences. The final mobile, the Stylised Dancers, is highly reflective and mirrors light as the shapes move above your baby. This mobile is highly engaging and supports advanced tracking and builds on the visual skills developed in the other mobiles. 

These mobiles became a beautiful part of our daily routine, enabling me to sometimes do household chores or set up the environment for my older children. My baby rarely lost interest in the mobiles, tracking and cooing to them in the sunlight happily, while my older children played nearby. I noticed that they enabled him to develop tracking and visual skills without overstimulation and gave him that beginning I wanted of beauty and wonder.