Teaching "Practical Life" skills can be extremely fun and rewarding. When you plan to demonstrate practical life skills, you are teaching useful, functional skills that increase independence and self reliance. From my perspective this is a huge Win/Win. While it is a simple concept … in practice, it can be a bit more daunting then you might anticipate. Why? Because if you are following the Montessori approach one of the primary tenants of Practical Life exercises is that they must be real or as close to real as you can reasonably get. Which means you are using "familiar materials" that are potentially perishable AND breakable. Eeeek … a real bowl, a real container of oats, a real carton of milk! Sounds silly but with the cost of milk per gallon … all of the sudden that old adage, "don't cry over spilt milk" seems a bit more daunting.
In the Montessori method there are four skill building areas when demonstrating practical life skills.
Preliminary Skill Building: This application is all about the basic movements of life: carrying, pouring, scooping, folding and the like.
Applied Skill Building: This application is founded in caring for oneself and ones environment. Examples of applied skill building are: brushing ones hair, washing hands, sweeping, putting away toys, cleaning the table.
Grace & Courtesy Skill Building: To quote the line from one of our favorite Signing Time Songs, "Please, Thank You, Sorry helps everyone feel good." This application focusing on helping children know how to properly interact with society. the children work on the interactions of people to people.
Control of Movement Skill Building: This is one of the most fun for us. In this application you focus on refining those motor skills. (i.e. balancing on a balance beam, pinning the tail on the donkey, playing a toss and catch game)
Check out these great Montessori Practical Life Links:
No comments:
Post a Comment