Practical Life in the Toddler Years

Practical life is the heart of any Montessori Toddler Classroom and plays a major role in the development of children for years to come.  Practical life offers several major benefits to the child: the acquisition of a practical skill, the development of focused attention, and preparation for writing and reading.

The acquisition of a practical skill

Over the course of the two-year cycle in the toddler classroom, your child will have the opportunity to develop his/her skills in increasingly complex fine motor activities, care of self activities, care of the environment activities, and water activities.

As a part of the care of self curriculum, your child will be learning to dress him/herself, hang his/her own coat up on a hook, as well as use velcro, buttons, zippers, and snaps.  Threading beads and lacing work offers preparation for more complex dressing skills they will work on in the primary classroom (such as lacing and tying shoes).

The care of the environment and fine motor skills curriculum is vast.  Your children will have the opportunity to learn opening and closing various containers, spooning items from one bowl to another, dry pouring, pouring of water, transferring items by hand and with tongs, dusting, hammering, carrying a chair, folding a variety of cloths with a variety of folds, washing cloths by hand, washing dishes by hand, washing a table, sweeping, using a dust pan & brush, mopping, setting a table, and many more!

It is important to note that these are the opportunities every child will have in the toddler classroom, but every child will not master every skill.  Because the children have the freedom to develop themselves, there will be a great variety of skill acquisition.  However, there are only good choices of activity in the classroom, so you need not fear that your child will spend hours idle.  All work is important work, and we get to see how each child uniquely unfolds!

The development of focused attention

According to the material originally designed by Dr. Montessori, the child will first develop focus in the practical life areas.  Toddlers, as well as 3 and 4 year olds, naturally gravitate to these areas.  Dr. Montessori noted this and developed the curriculum so that the activities start simple and slowly increase in difficulty, with specific areas of focus.  The child will learn to concentrate well by spending much time in practical life.  With this foundation in toddlerhood and up to around 4 (or sometimes 5), he or she will be ready to spend focused time in other ares of the classroom, becoming much more competent in these more abstract areas when they are developmentally ready for them.