Montessori Practical Life Exercises

PRACTICAL LIFE EXERCISES

Practical Life Exercises are the foundation of the Montessori environment, provide a sane and wholesome range of activities which allow the children to develop control and coordination of movement, awareness of their environment, orderly thought patterns, independent work habits, responsibility, and many other characteristics which can only be attained through spontaneous, purposeful work.

Dressing Frames These individual Dressing Frames present a variety of activities which introduce self-help skills - buttoning, lacing, zipping, etc.While doing these exercises, children also hone fine finger motor skills, understand the importance of sequence in tasks, as well as enhance focus and concentration.
	Pouring Exercises Dry Pouring Wet PouringWhen presented to the children, they are shown how to do pouring without spilling the contents of the vessels. Mind-hand coordination is developed as the children exert their efforts to pour in the same manner presented by the teacher. Thus, all their focus and attention, their entire body concentrates to complete "pour without spilling". This procedure promotes what Montessori calls "integration of the mind and the body" which is the primary foundation for the child's "development of will". The child discovers that he can conduct his bodily movements through the direction of his will. When translated to a life skill, this gives the child confidence in facing challenging activities realizing that he can practically accomplish any task as long as he wills it.
Transferring Exercises Spooning Marble Spooning Tongs Exercises (various kinds of tongs ranging from simple to difficult)Transferring Exercises in the Practical Life Area provide interesting opportunities for the child to build eye-hand coordination, develop focus and attention, refine motor skills and hone muscular control. Making use of things mostly found around the home, these activities promote learning of skills that also enable them to participate fully and independently in their home life. With independence comes also the building of the child's self-confidence and initaitive which carries out to his attitude towards learning in general.
	Washing Hands Exercise The Washing Hands Exercise is only one of the many "Care of the Self" exercises of the Practical Life Area. In doing these exercises, children are able to integrate and practice a variety of skills while gaining a better understanding of the importance of sequence in completing a task. Since the completeion of this activity requires a series of related steps, children learn to improve on their focus on the task and increase their attention span to see the task through its completion.

SENSORIAL EXERCISES

Sensorial Materials allow for individual work and repetition, and allows children to clasify their sensorial impressions in an organized, orderly, and scientific manner. They have a built in control of error, which builds in the child the habit of working independently, without fear of making mistakes, becoming comfortable in the fact that errors are essential to the process of learning.

Rough and Smooth Boards Set This set of three boards forms the introductory materials for development of the tactile sense and prepares the hand for writing. The first board introduces the contrast of rough and smooth. The second board helps to coordinate finger movements and builds dexterity. The third board introduces gradations of texture from fine to coarse.
	Pink Tower This series of cubes develops visual discrimination of size in three dimensions. Exploration with this material prepares the child for mathematical concepts in the decimal system, geometry and volume.
Set of Knobless Cylinders The Knobless Cylinders are the final stage (application) in the dimensional material where the child places in order the sets of cylinders based upon his abilities to discriminate. The cylinders have interrelationships in size that are revealed to the child as he works with the sets in combination.
	Thermic Tablets When touched, each of the Thermic Tablets has a different sense of temperature. The pairs of tablets are used to cultivate the ability to discriminate thermic qualities.
Baric Tablets The Baric Tablets introduce and refine the concepts of the baric sense. While blindfolded, the child endeavors to discern the weight of the tablets of wood. Error is controlled by the color of the wooden tablets, the lightest color being the lightest weight to the darkest color wood being the heaviest weight.
	Geometric Solids The Geometric Solids introduce the child to solid geometry. The set contains one each of the following solids: Cylinder, cube, ellipsoid, cone, sphere, square-based pyramid, triangular-based pyramid, ovoid, rectangular prism and triangular prism.
Binomial Cube The Binomial Cube is a concrete repre- sentation of the algebraic formula (a+b)³. The factors of the equation are represented by the cubes and prisms. The primary Montessori child explores the Binomial Cube as a sensorial activity of visual discrimination of color and form. This indirect preparation for algebra prepares the child for the elementary Montessori class.
	Trinomial Cube The Trinomial Cube is a concrete representation of the algebraic formula (a+b+c)³. The factors of the equation are represented by the cubes and prisms. The primary Montessori child explores the Trinomial cube as a sensorial activity of visual discrimination of color and form. This indirect preparation for algebra prepares the child for the elementary Montessori class.