Montessori at Home
“These words reveal a child's inner needs: ‘Help me to do it alone.’”
-Maria Montessori
Here are some activities to further your child’s Montessori education at home.
For three and four year olds:
• Set the table...with good dishes.
• Help with the shopping and compile a grocery list.
• Help put the groceries away.
• Polish shoes and clean up afterwards.
• Follow a schedule for feeding pets.
• Help do yard and garden work.
• Help make beds and vacuum.
• Help to do the dishes or fill the dishwasher.
• Dust the furniture.
• Pour own drink from child sized jug.
• Spread butter on sandwiches.
• Prepare cold cereal.
• Tear lettuce for salad.
• Help prepare plates for the family dinner.
• Make a simple dessert-add topping to cupcakes, Jell-O.
• Hold the hand mixer to mix up a cake.
• Share toys with friends-practice courtesy.
• Get the mail.
• Dress self.
• Put dirty clothes in laundry hamper/basket.
• Load washer and dryer.
• Fold clean clothes.
• Help sort the recycling and take it out.
• Tell parents his/her whereabouts before going out to play.
• Should be able to play without constant adult supervision and attention.
Help the child learn responsibilities by making a goal chart. If the work is done all week the parent and child do something special together, i.e. go out for lunch.
For five year olds: all of the above plus
• Help with meal planning and grocery shopping.
• Make own sandwich or breakfast and then clean up.
• Pour own drink.
• Prepare the dinner table.
• Wash vegetables for dinner.
• Peel vegetables for dinner.
• Put in some ingredients when baking.
• Make bed and clean room.
• Choose outfit for the day and dress self.
• Scrub the sink or bathtub.
• Clean windows and mirrors.
• Separate clothes for washing-whites in one pile, colours in another.
• Fold clean clothes and put them away.
• Yard work.
• Pay for small purchases.
• Help clean out the car.
• Help wash the car.
• Take out the garbage.
• Feed pets and keep their living area clean.
• Tie own shoelaces.
• Decide how he/she wants to spend his share of the family
entertainment fund.
• If the child has an allowance decide what to spend, save and share.
As Maria Montessori has written, “Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity, which is derived from a sense of independence.”
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