Flour Sifting

Montessori Flour Sifting

I posted on my Facebook page last week that I was putting flour sifting on the practical life shelf and that I might just be crazy for doing it.

So far it’s turned out pretty well. Flour has gotten on the shelf, mat, and floor, but it isn’t the potential disaster I imagined. It took me a little while to figure out the cycle of the work. My original thought was to have Joey use a funnel to put the flour from the bowl back to the lidded container. As I walked through the work myself, I found that would be too many steps for him at this point.

I settled with him spooning the flour back into the container. The one problem with this is that Joey gets tired of spooning it back and tends to just dump it back in the sifter resulting in more flour spilling. We’re working on it though.

Place Sifter Over Collection Bowl

1. Place sifter over a low bowl.

Pouring Flour Into Sifter

2. Pour flour into the sifter.

Sift The Flour

3. Sift the flour. 

Spooning Flour Back Into Container

4. Once the flour is all sifted, spoon it from the bowl back into the lidded container.

Extension: I haven’t done this yet, but I thought a good extension might be to mix flour in with the rice. Then when the child sifts the mixture the flour and rice would separate and the child would spoon them into their respective containers.

1 comment… add one

  • Montessori Print Shop July 24, 2011, 4:24 am

    I’ve been waiting to see how this exercise was going to work out! In my head I was imagining the scene at my house … 3 boys and a bowl of flour…hmmm.

    The extension of adding the rice and separating it after the sifting is an excellent point of awareness.

    Thanks for sharing … we’ll be sure to share your post with our readers.

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