Practical Life
Practical Life embodies the practical details
of everyday life; they are the ways in which
we create, maintain, and enrich our environments
and ourselves. This includes such activities
as cleaning the house, decorating, brushing
teeth, and maintaining social relationships.
The Practical Life area of the primary Montessori
classroom serves a developmental need for
the child. The 3-6 year old child yearns to
participate in the world around them and to
learn to“do things for themselves.” The
child is attracted to these activities because
they demand collaboration between body and
mind. They are attracted to the logical sequence
of events involved in the work. Children do
this work with great joy, fully engaged in
body, mind, and spirit.
Educational Objectives
Direct Purpose: Through Practical Life, the child experiences
and develops skills needed for independence. The coordination
and control needed for the activities helps the child
to
perfect movement, both fine motor and gross motor control.
By fully engaging in the
activity, practical life gives the child the experience
of concentration, which is necessary to
establish an independent cycle of work in the classroom.
Indirect Purpose: The child begins to adapt to their
culture, learning skills that are important for their
environment and time. Also, the child gains a particular
skill necessary for everyday life, such as learning
to button. Children come to understand the importance
of sequence, logical order, and accuracy—important
early math skills. Practical life is often the first
area presented to a child. It is the foundation for
everything to come and is a prerequisite for much of
the other work in the classroom.
Means and Materials
Care of Self
Activities in the classroom which guide the child in gaining
independence in taking care of
themselves:
• Dressing Frames
• Hand Washing
• Shoe Polishing
• Making Applesauce
• Making Orange Juice
Care of Environment
Within the classroom, our goal is to allow
the children to function as independently
as
possible. Thus, the child must know how to navigate and
care for the classroom environment.
• Dusting
• Sweeping
• Silver Polishing
• Table Washing
• Flower Arranging
Grace and Courtesy Lessons
Grace and Courtesy lessons are designed
to give the child the means to practice ways
of
dealing with a social situation. These lessons promote
harmony in the very broadest sense:
Grace is harmony between mind and body; courtesy is harmony
between oneself and other. The social aspect of these
lessons focuses on the goal of establishing and maintaining
satisfying relationships in the classroom, allowing a
means for each individual to be satisfied within the group.
Grace and Courtesy lessons are presented so there is an
atmosphere of peace and communication in the classroom
The focus of these lessons in on one way of moving or
what to say in a certain specific social situation—in
this way the child becomes more at ease with herself and
with other people. They also become better aware of ways
to effectively communicate their needs. Grace and Courtesy
lessons are given in small or large groups, with children
role playing in a specific situation.
• How to get someone’s attention
• How to stand in a line
• How to greet someone in the morning
• How to tell someone you did not like something
Art
Creating something can be a mode of self-expression
or communication. However, the
purpose of early art is the same as practical life—perfection
of movement, encouraging
independence, and concentration. Particularly at an early
age, the child is sensitive to movement, and is keyed
into the sensorial aspects of art, such as size, dimension,
and shape. The indirect purpose of the work is to learn
to manipulate tools, such as scissors, needles and thread,
paint brushes, etc., as well as allowing the child a means
to practice pencil grip. The young child is very enthralled
with the process, but has little interest in the result
of their work of art. However, we want to prepare them
for that moment of consciousness when they are interested
in the results (this occurs generally around 4-6 years
of age.) Art then becomes a conscious tool of self-expression.
• Cutting
• Drawing with crayons, pencils, oil pastels
• Printing
• Painting
• Pasting
• Sewing
• Art Folders
Sensorial
Senses are the means through which we take
in the world—the only way that we learn.
From birth the child is exposed to all of
the senses. Through a natural process, they
begin to refine these senses, taking all impressions
of the world. The young child has a natural
tendency to sort and classify. This is a very
vital process that allows the child to build
their intellect. The sensorial experiences
of seeing, hearing, touching, etc., give the
child a concrete experience which will aid
abstraction, setting foundations for classification.
There is long period in which the child is
particularly sensitive to refinement of the
senses (birth to age 5). During this period,
the child is acutely aware of all things sensorial.
They want to explore with their senses, using
their whole body. This special fascination
with the concrete sensorial world diminishes
at age 5, as the child moves into a period
of greater abstraction using their ability
to classify and imagine.
Educational Objctives
Direct Purposes:
Refinement of the senses—Through refinement
of the senses, the child can explore more
deeply, giving them a higher consciousness
of their surroundings. It is an aid to the
refinement of senses, helping to clarify the
information that the sense organs provide.
Assist process of classification—At
first the child makes broad classifications,
but working with the materials, they begin
to see finer and finer distinctions. Instead
of having a vague
understanding of the environment, they have absorbed it
deeply. It allows them to develop precise and orderly
concepts, working with ordered information when they are
anipulating
materials. Assist process of abstraction—The process
of abstraction does not occur earlier with a child who
works with sensorial materials, but it does make the connections
clearer, because they have a precise picture in their
minds.
Indirect Purposes:
• Appreciation of beauty
• Control of movement
• Preparation for mathematical mind, particularly through
order, exactness present in materials. Preparation for geometry
and cubing.
• Language—child gains exact language to express
the aspects of their sensorial world
Means and Materials
Visual Sense: Dimension and Color
• Solid Cylinder Blocks
• Pink Tower
• Red Rods
• Color Tablets
• Geometric Cabinet
• Botany Cabinet
Tactile Sense
• Touch Boards
• Fabrics
• Graded Touch Tablets
• Baric Tablets
• Thermic Tablets
Olfactory Sense
• Smelling Bottles
Gustatory Sense
• Tasting Bottles
Auditory Sense
• Sound Cylinders
• The Bells
Stereognostic Sense—combining
tactile sense and muscular memory
• Geometric Solids
• Sorting
• Mystery Bag
Visual Sense: Geometry and Algebra
• Rectangular, Triangular, and Hexagonal
Boxes
• Binomial Cube
• Trinomial Cube
Geography
• Land and Water Forms
• Sandpaper and Painted Globes
• Puzzle Maps of the World, Continents, and United
States
• Cultural Folders
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