Practical Life
Lesson plans all about daily life
Teaching practical skills to young children involve all those tiny details that go into moving through daily life. These daily chores and practices are activities in self-care, control of movement, caring for the environment, for plants & animals and also involve manners and grace and courtesy.
Perhaps some of the most important skills for a child to learn, practical life lessons are far too often omitted as it may be supposed by the teacher or the parent that these things can easily be ingrained in children from simple observation. Yet as important as these things are they are too often over-looked and deserve more attention in our movements towards helping young children to gain greater mastery in their endeavors.
Providing materials and activities for children to refine themselves in all practical life areas will give them important confidence and will become milestones for them to feel mastery over themselves and their environment. These are simple yet crucial points in which children need practice in order to make these tasks a positvie part of themselves forever.
Getting children at this age engaged in such activities is not difficult either. In fact, it is quite easy as children of preschool age love to sweep, dust, water the plants, feed their pets, and to help around the house and in the classroom as much as opportunity allows. It is because of this tendency that it was thought by pioneers in early childhood education, like Maria Montessori, that children in fact go through a ‘sensitive period’ for such things.
Here at the LittleLearner we are working hard to provide eager and helpful hands with plenty to do! Teachers and parents will find all kinds of ideas here for teaching children about their environment, how to organize it, how to care for it and how to take pride in it.
