How do you make Montessori kitchen independence actually work with a normal-height family table?
I'm having a little bit of confusion figuring out how to practically incorporate Montessori at home, particularly in the kitchen, with my 17-month-old.
She LOVES helping in the kitchen and is actually becoming pretty capable when things are set up for her. She cuts fruits and vegetables (with toddler-safe tools), helps make her own smoothies, pours her own drinks, sets her place at the table, etc. We have a learning tower, and once she's up there and everything is accessible, she can do quite a bit independently.
But that's also where I'm running into a problem.
We have a normal kitchen with a high dining table. She can get things from her little trolley/shelf at floor level, but she obviously can't take something from there, climb into her learning tower while carrying it, and then put it onto the table/counter. At 17 months, that just isn't realistic or safe.
So even though I've made her utensils and other things accessible to her, there's still this missing link where I have to transfer everything to the workspace for her. Once I do that, she's independent again.
I've seen Montessori setups where people create a whole child-height kitchen area—sometimes converting an IKEA play kitchen into a functional kitchenette, adding a little fridge, child-height counter, accessible dishes, etc. I can definitely create something like that, but I'm trying to understand how it actually integrates into normal family life.
For example, I could put a small table in the kitchen where she could prepare food completely independently. But we eat together as a family at our dining table, and she really enjoys that. I don't want to put her at a little table by herself while the rest of us are eating at the family table just for the sake of making the setup more "Montessori."
I also have a 4-month-old, so eventually I can imagine having a child-height table where the two of them can sit and do things together, but right now it would just be my toddler sitting separately.
For those of you who practice Montessori at home with very young toddlers, how do you handle this transition between child-height storage/workspaces and adult-height family spaces?
Do you have a separate child-height food prep area but still eat at the family table? Do you just accept that transferring things to the counter/table requires adult help at this age? Or have you found another setup that lets a young toddler genuinely get their own things, prepare something, and bring it to where the family eats?
I'm not necessarily trying to maximize independence at all costs. I'm trying to figure out what a practical Montessori setup looks like in a real shared family kitchen without creating a completely separate little world for her.