I am pretty new to Montessori education, but I really appreciate its focus on teaching young children practical life skills. I feel that practical life activities very much address the “self-care” building block for kindergarten readiness.
The kids love helping me in the kitchen, so I have used this to my advantage to provide them with some practical life work that builds fine motor skills. Here are two practical life activities we have done in the kitchen.
Note: For more activities that use Montessori principles in the home, see my Montessori Activities page.
Slicing bananas
Occasionally the kids and I make a wonderful, no-dairy, banana ice cream. The first step to make this dessert is to slice up the bananas. This task offers a perfect opportunity to practice a very practical life skill: cutting things with a knife. I demonstrate for the kids how to hold the (not sharp) knife, and how to angle their hand and arm as they cut.
QBoy is getting pretty proficient at this skill, and can generally cut some very nice slices.
XGirl is still developing the motor control to do this activity well.
But no matter what their slices look like, we sure enjoy making banana ice cream from our work!
Zesting an orange
Recently I was baking some cookies that called for zest of orange as an ingredient. I decided to show the kids how to zest an orange using a small grater.
They worked on positioning their hand on the orange and pushing the orange into the grater with enough force to scrape off the peel.
They worked on turning the orange every so often to scrape a new section of the peel.
What have your kids done in the kitchen to build practical life skills? Please share your ideas and posts in the comments.
More Montessori resources
More Montessori posts from Gift of Curiosity:
- Apple Montessori activities
- Farm Montessori activities
- Pirate Montessori activities
- Winter Montessori activities
- Easter Montessori activities
- 4th of July Montessori activities
- Halloween Montessori activities
- Montessori caves unit
- Practical life activities using food
- Montessori mapping activities
- Montessori living / nonliving / once living activities
- Montessori sandpaper letters
Foe more Montessori ideas, see my Montessori activities page and my Montessori Pinterest board.
those are great learning skills! Feel free to link up @ Learn and Link! Have a great weekend! http://mamato3blessings.blogspot.com/2013/01/insect-observation-insect-leaf-crafts.html
My little girl loves helping in the kitchen too and I love knowing that I’m teaching her life long skills. We also love some home made banana ice cream, I wrote about our ‘recipe’ this week 🙂
Visiting from The Sunday Showcase x
Such a simple recipe but so delicious as well!
Great post. Cutting bananas was also one of the first kitchen skills I taught my son.
My kids get so excited when I invite them to help cut bananas. I love how much fun they have with this task!
I love when kids help and learn in the kitchen! I will be featuring this at my next Super Link Party on Wednesday! I hope you come check it out. 🙂
What wonderful food preparation activities! And your photos are adorable! Thanks so much for linking up with Montessori Monday. I featured your post at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/LivingMontessoriNow
What wonderful ideas! My son loves to cut cucumbers and bananas too, and grating will be a fun new step today 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
So fun and so important. My daughter has a chopper similar to what they use at her Waldorf School to help chop vegetables for soup and other dinners. Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!
I’d love to know what kind of chopper they use at a Waldorf School.
Great ideas for teaching independence. I think need more practice because I always cut myself on graters!
Thanks for linking to the Sunday showcase
More great ideas. Thanks again.
There really is no such thing as a Chinese Chicken Salad but that is what they call it so we put different ingredients in bowls and the kids put what they want in their own bowl. They learn how to serve themselves with small serving spoons. They like to make their own mini pizzas using English Muffins deciding what they want to put on their pizza. Also making tossed green salads. Why have I not tried bananas? I have a lot of little plastic forks. Tomorrow! Thank you Katie.
Faye