Walking into a Montessori Early Childhood classroom for the first time, the visitor may be surprised by a number of activities taking place: small children sweeping the floor, polishing the leaves of a plant, scrubbing a table, or washing dishes. In a different area of the classroom, a child may be preparing their own snack or arranging a vase of flowers. Another child, getting up from a chair, carefully tucks it in under the table. Even more surprising is that the children, so engaged, carry out these activities with purposeful movement and independence.
These activities are examples of Practical Life exercises, a hallmark of Montessori education. While, at first glance, the child may appear to be involved in domestic chores, they are “in reality busily at work on [their] development—and the method of [their] learning is through movement” (Montessori 2017, 34). The aim of table washing, in other words, is much more than a clean table. We’ll come back to this.
Young children are highly motivated to engage in those activities they commonly see at home; anyone who has ever had a small child in the household knows that they frequently ask to help with cooking, washing dishes, folding clothes, or laying the table. To this end, many homes and schools provide items like toy kitchen sets with which the child imitates the chores of older siblings, caregivers, and parents. But “Real, true purpose is a hallmark of Practical Life” (Lillard 2008). These make-believe activities do not satisfy the child’s need “to exert themselves in their surroundings” (Montessori 1948/2019, 86) as they have no practical purpose; that is, the child does not see a real-life result of their play. Integrating Practical Life activities—work, not play—into the real aspects of caring for oneself and the environment “… seeks to give all this to the child in reality—making him an actor in a living scene” (Montessori in Lillard 2008).
Why is this important, and what does Montessori Practical Life look like through the ages? This series examines the types, aims, and examples of such activities at the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary levels. Additionally, we will examine the correspondence of Montessori’s ideas about child development—as they relate to the Practical Life exercises—to Erik Erikson’s psycho-social stages of development.
Practical Life Exercises in the Early Childhood Classroom
The opinions expressed in Montessori Life are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of AMS.