Practical Life

Practical Life: Care of the Environment

December 23, 2010

Practical life in a Montessori home is really about allowing your child to become involved with the daily tasks of managing a household. Care of the environment, most often seen as cleaning in the home,  is an essential part of any well-managed household. Even children, as young as toddlers and twos, can participate in many [...]

Read the full article →

Practical Life: Using Tongs

November 15, 2010

Ages: 24+ months Goal: To develop fine motor skills that lay the basis for the pincer grip used in writing. Materials: work mat, tray, 2 identical containers, tongs (children’s size are ideal), objects to transfer Presentation: Prepare the work and get out the mat. With the work facing the child and the mat between you, make [...]

Read the full article →

Practical Life: Pouring (for Toddlers)

November 15, 2010

Ages: 18 to 24 months Materials: work mat, tray, 2 identical containers, objects to pour Presentation: Prepare the work and get out the mat. With the work facing the child and the mat between you, make sure the container with the objects is on the child’s left-hand side. Demonstrate two-hand pouring with one hand on [...]

Read the full article →

Practical Life: Cooking

November 6, 2010

An easy first step into incorporating practical life activities into your home to allow your child to do what you do. It’s likely that they’re already following you around and showing interest in everyday chores. Capitalize on that interest and allow them to get involved. One place we do that is in our kitchen with cooking. [...]

Read the full article →

What is Practical Life?

October 11, 2010

Practical life is an area in the Montessori philosophy that encompasses, well, skills practical to everyday life. They are a series of fine motor skills that include cleaning and caring for the environment as well as preparing food. These activities benefit the child because it develops control of movement and hand-eye coordination that form the [...]

Read the full article →

Spooning Ice Cubes

September 13, 2010

Our theme for this month is a combination of The Body, All About Me, and the 5 senses. After naptime today we did a little activity that appealed to the sense of touch. And it was cold! I took a bowl, filled it  with water, and dumped two trays of ice cubes in it. Then [...]

Read the full article →

Practical Life: Crushing Paper

October 8, 2009

Age: 9 – 12 months Goal: Laying the foundation for putting trash paper in a tr ash can as well as developing fine motor skills. Materials: work mat, tray, basket, five pieces of paper (ie, tissue paper, wrapping paper, construction paper) Avoid using paper with words (ie, magazines, newspapers, books) so that you can model [...]

Read the full article →

Why I Love Montessori

July 25, 2009

It’s a pretty self-explanatory title. There’s so many great things about the Montessori method, but here are some of the reasons why I love Montessori. In no particular order… Concrete to Abstract. I love that concepts start with something concrete and move to abstract. Especially in math. Throughout my schooling years even through high school, [...]

Read the full article →