Montessori Pracitcal Life Checklist – Printable

It’s been a little while since we’ve shared a Montessori Practical Life lesson here, but they are a daily occurrence at our house. Today, I want to share with you a Montessori Practical Life Checklist to help you plan and choose practical life activities to suit your child.

Now, I’m going to start by saying that you do not have to do every single practical life activity on this list! In fact, you really shouldn’t follow my list of suggestions to inform your own concept of practical life.

Your list of practical life activities should be personalized to your family’s lifestyle, your child’s interests, and your surrounding cultural influences. For example, one of our first practical life lessons is on the safe and quiet moving of a chair. If you exclusively use cushions in your home for portable seating, this lesson ceases to be practical for you.

However, I have no lessons on farm tasks or care of a pet – maybe those are relatable and practical for you.

Further, we all have different levels of comfort when it comes to trusting our children with real tools. Ella was cooking on the stove at 18 months, learned how to use a manual drill last Halloween to “carve” her pumpkin, and at 4 years old has recently learned to chop wood with supervision.

How to Conduct a Practical Life Lesson

When teaching a Montessori Practical Life lesson, you need to slow down and think about how a child’s hands would carry out the task. Their hands lack the size and strength that we sometimes take for granted, so we need to alter how we might teach them a task.

Also, it’s important to teach things slowly and consciously. My daughter now opens all plastic wrapped packages with a pen because that’s what she witnessed me do when she was younger (pens are always in reach for me, whereas scissors are put away). While this isn’t necessarily a bad habit, it’s not an orderly one and it does have the potential to leave marks on the items she’s opening.

So, while some of the details included in some practical life lessons can be ignored, it is important to stop and consider why that detail may have been included. Does that make it easier for kids to emulate? Is that a safer way of carrying out that task?

Click here to see all of my Montessori Practical Life lessons.

 

Practical life lessons slowly grow and expand into other categories – for example, Care of the Environment grows to include art appreciation and learning how to beautify one’s environment with art. Care of the Self can be deepened to a greater understanding of biology, while basic cooking skills learned in Primary can develop into a knowledge of chemistry and love of all things cooking!

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Click here to download your free copy of my Montessori Practical Life checklist.

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Check out this month’s Practical Life ideas from my fellow Montessori bloggers:

Raising Independent Kids – Practical Life Skills (Printables) | Natural Beach Living

Montessori Practical Life Ideas – Dressing Frames & Folding {Printables} | The Natural Homeschool

Favorite Montessori Practical Life Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers | Living Montessori Now

Practical Life Skills – Recycling for Kids | Mama’s Happy Hive

Montessori-inspired Shark Themed Practical Life Activities | Every Star is Different

Practical Life for an Older Child | Grace and Green Pastures

10 Ways to Encourage Family Chores this Summer | Christian Montessori Network

Practical Life at 2-Years-Old | The Kavanaugh Report