Hello, I’m Simone Davies

When I felt most myself as a child, I was sitting up a tree reading a book. I still love books and spending time in nature. It might surprise you to know that as a child, I was nicknamed “Moanie macaroni” because I would whinge a lot. “When are we going home?” “When are they leaving?” “I’m bored.” It turns out, I like to keep myself busy and, over time, I learned to pack myself some activities to play with, or some knitting, or of course a book. My own experiences as a child helped me to recognise how important it is to understand every child’s needs and how we can meet them.

At school I studied hard memorising everything we were taught. While it earned me A grades, it also brought a great deal of stress. I completed a business degree (with a double major in Accounting/Management) and headed overseas to do two years of solo travel where I met a Welshman, Luke, who was to become my husband and the father of our children.

I loved becoming a mother and raising my two children, Oliver and Emma, who are now young adults. I found it fascinating to watch them exploring the world, bright-eyed and curious. Even from the youngest age, I found I had enormous empathy for my children, understanding that when they were upset, they were trying to communicate something to us.
Motherhood made me grow in so many ways. I like to say it’s like layers of an onion. You explore and develop one layer, and then there is another underneath waiting to be uncovered. We never stop learning and growing alongside our children.

Getting cooperation from my children through threats or bribery didn’t feel right for me. But it wasn’t obvious what the alternatives were. When I found Montessori, it immediately felt right, it felt like home. It aligned to the way I wanted to raise my children and gave me a framework for raising my children in a respectful way.
In 2002, I attended a Montessori playgroup with my children and I loved watching them learn in a concrete, hands-on way. As they explored, they learned.
It had such an impact on the way I raised my children that in 2004 I decided to do my Montessori training with Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), the training organisation set up by Dr Montessori’s family to maintain the integrity of Montessori training.

In 2006, we arrived in Amsterdam for a one year adventure to be closer to family in the UK. We packed our bags and traded in our car for bikes. I worked in a bilingual Montessori nursery and the children attended a local Montessori school as part of the public education system. After a year, we stayed another and then another until one year turned into many more.


By 2008, I found that I missed working with families. I opened Jacaranda Tree Montessori, a Montessori playgroup just like the one which had inspired my own family’s Montessori adventure. In the first year we grew from 0 to 48 families and moved into a bigger space. I instantly felt at home there and set about creating the signature calm, learning environment that the families love so much. Our bigger space allowed me to welcome 96 families each week to the playgroup and run regular workshops for them.

By 2015, I realised that there were so many more families, both here in Amsterdam and around the world, who couldn’t join our playgroup but were still curious about Montessori for their children. After seeing how much our playgroup families appreciated the newsletters and information sheets I shared, I launched The Montessori Notebook to help other families explore the Montessori approach as well – it has become a hub for inspiration, online courses, a podcast, and more.


While riding my bike to and from the playgroup, I did a lot of thinking and had the idea of writing a book. So many of our families asked me what book they should read about Montessori for toddlers. I would give them many books they could try but realised there wasn’t one book that covered everything they needed to know. I wondered, could I be the person to write that book? In the summer of 2017, I did a houseswap staying in a lovely apartment in Lyon and began to write. The words for the The Montessori Toddler flowed out, answering all the questions I was asked every day from families. Soon I had a first draft completed and decided the best way to get the book out there was to launch a Kickstarter campaign with the help of illustrator, Hiyoko Imai, who attended my classes with her son. In just one month we sold over 1,000 books(!) and we promised all our backers that they would be delivered by February 2018. Now we had a book to finalise, design, illustrate, and print in just 6 months. How exciting!
Many late nights and so much love were poured into the book before we gently put the first ones in the post in February 2018, just as we promised.

The success of The Montessori Toddler was beyond any expectations I could have had and I felt so blessed when Workman Publishing approached me to acquire the rights to distribute it around the world. In 2019, Workman sent me on a book tour around the US, from the West Coast, through Texas, and down the East Coast too. It was a whirlwind and one of the most exhilarating (and tiring!) things I’ve ever done. A journalist from the New York Times interviewed me about the book – truly a pinch-me moment.


Returning to Amsterdam after the tour, I invited a Montessori friend, educator Junnifa Uzodike, for a home-cooked meal while she was visiting Amsterdam for some Montessori board meetings. I told her that people were asking about a Montessori book for the first year and she told me that as she was travelling here she had been thinking of writing a book about Montessori for babies. We decided then and there to write it together. That evening we took a blank piece of paper and transformed it into the outline for The Montessori Baby book.


I love listening to long-form podcasts and having long chats with people who have brought Montessori into their lives in all sorts of different ways. So in 2020, I launched The Montessori Notebook podcast, deep conversations with Montessori families around the world. To my delight, the podcast has grown to over 700,000 downloads and you can see that Montessori is not just a trend, but a way of raising children that people are embracing.

Junnifa and I wrote The Montessori Baby during a global pandemic, over Zoom calls and so many WhatsApp messages. By the end of the process, Junnifa has become my book wife and in April 2021, the book is birthed. There was no book tour this time, but we hosted the cosiest online book launch party.


No sooner had we launched The Montessori Baby than people are already asking for another book. They need to know, what happens after the baby and toddler years? Junnifa and I open a new document for the third book in the series, The Montessori Child. This book helps families to bring Montessori into their homes whether or not their child goes to a Montessori school. My children are now young adults, I interview many Montessori educators and friends, and I follow as many trainings as I can so that I can learn everything I can about the years from 3 – 18 to share in the book.
In March 2024, Junnifa travels from Nigeria and I travel from The Netherlands for a book tour around the US to launch The Montessori Child book. This is the third time we have met in person after writing two books together. We travelled to 6 cities in 14 days and spread the Montessori love everywhere we went.


I have built a simple life for myself that is infused with joy. I love hosting my classes at Jacaranda Tree Montessori each morning. The toddlers enjoy exploring the space, while their adults grow alongside them. I continue to run online workshops and send a little letter every month to over 30,000 people on my mailing list to help them make Montessori an everyday part of their lives.
The books have taken on a life of their own. They have been translated into over 30 languages and I love when people share with me on Instagram that they’ve spotted them in the wild, in their local libraries and bookstores.
Together we are learning that a Montessori life is for every child and for every family. It is culturally responsive and a way to raise children with love, respect and understanding.
My hope is that this beautiful approach continues to reach even more families around the world. Including yours.