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 Practical life
activities include a wide range of tasks from pushing
in a chair to baking a cake. These activities address the child's
basic desire to feel competent, to be independent, and to belong.
In addition, the practical life activities help children develop a
sense of order and sequence, help develop muscular coordination,
hand/eye coordination, and provide an opportunity for concentrated
purposeful work. The skills gained through work in the practical
life area are essential for success in all other curriculum areas.
The teacher carefully presents practical life activities to the
children, paying attention to sequence, timing and rhythm. "What
we have to consider is how we can present this action to the
small child and at the same time disturb as little as possible
the creative instinct." (Maria Montessori)
Practical life activities can be divided into the following categories:
- Care of the person: includes activities such as hand washing,
dressing, and personal hygiene. These activities embody the
foundations of self-esteem.
- Care of the environment: includes activities such as washing
chairs, dusting, raking leaves, cooking, feeding animals, watering
plants, composting, recycling and job time at the end of the day.
These activities promote the beginnings of community awareness and
embody the foundations of an ecological ethic.
- Social relations: Maria Montessori called these exercises
Grace and Courtesy. They include developing skills in greeting
visitors, participating in a conversation, self-assertion, resolving
conflicts, initiating and maintaining friendships.
- Coordination of movement: this includes many exercises
involving hand/eye coordination, carrying objects, self-expression
through movement as well as initiating and inhibiting actions and
impulses. The Silence Game is an example of a group activity in which
children have to restrain impulses to speak or move for a short period
of time in order to report on what they may have experienced in the
interim.
These activities become progressively more detailed and complex as the
child moves along the continuum. Each task utilizes a previously
mastered skill while introducing a new skill.
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