EMPOWERING CHILDREN THROUGH PLAY

Play is to a child what work is to an adult. One of the reason why children play is to develop. Children between 0- 6 years absorb billions of information from the environment with their senses. After they download the information, they look for avenues to express it. A child sees an adult sweeping and will want to do what he has seen. Children like imitating adults- they see what an adult does and want to do it. Parents and guardians play important role when it come to a child’s growth and development. Besides providing balanced diet, parents and guardians also ensure the environment is safe and decent for the child to grow and develop. A safe and decent environment is a term in Montessori setting known as the prepared environment. Parents and guardians can get involve in their child’s play by planning and designing  what is practical and exposes children to real life activities.

What is practical Life Exercise(PLE)?

Practical Life Exercise is one of the curriculum areas in the Montessori curriculum.

Practical life Exercises like the name implies, are the exercises a child is involve in that helps the child to learn how to do living activities in a purposeful way. This exercise exposes and prepares the child for real life situations.

Teach me to do it myself – Maria Montessori

Importance of practical life exercise
The purpose and importance of practical life exercise includes 

1.          It helps a child to be independent and adapt to the society: PLE helps a child to be independent because the child does the activities by himself rather than others do for him. Have you seen 1¹/₂  year or 2 years old struggling to eat by themselves? Yes, they have seen their parents or siblings eating and would want to try it out. When a child is allowed to eat independently, that independence becomes his personality trait and will help him for future life also.

2.           It held a child to develop love for work: PLE helps the child to develop love for work because he enjoys doing activities, especially the routine activities, by himself. It gives the child feeling of being important. He loves to eat, comb his hair, brush his teeth, carry his plate, turn on the TV, sweep and mop. All these activities have a great importance in a child’s life.

3.          It helps the child to have self-satisfaction and self-respect: Every child wants to do practical life exercises as he sees his family member doing these activities on daily basis. If adults let the child to do these activities, his desires fulfill, he gains self-satisfaction and self-respect.  If these exercises are done by the child perfectly and appropriately, he may be a good and well-mannered person in his future life. Modern life is so much busy and children need to learn very efficient skills and practical life exercises enable them to do that.

4.              It helps the child to give and take help gracefully: Exercises of practical life help the child to give and take help gracefully from younger and older siblings. For example, the statement of saying “go and clean your room”, “go and wash your handkerchief” should be spoken in a very good way. The tone should be polite. Rather than saying “go and clean your room” should be said “let us all clean the room”. When an adult says this, the child feels good and it will boost the child’s elf-esteem.  The child who receives help would later be the first helper.

5.              It helps in transmitting good manners: If an adult loves working or complains when doing his/her work, the child will do the same by imitating it. So, practical life exercises form love for working and working in a proper way.

6.               It helps a child to gain control and coordination of movement: practical life exercises help a child to develop the motor skills like walking, jumping, running, writing, eating, holding cup, etc. I will talk more on this is my next article.

7.           It helps a child to normalize: The age of 0 -6 is the age is a sensitive period in the life of a child. Every child has a strong urge to work for development. If the child couldn’t get opportunity to fulfill his urges, it may result in deviation. That’s why, practical life exercises help children to fulfill their strong inner urges and by the fulfillment of theses urges lead children to normality. 

8.            It helps the child develop concentration: Children are very energetic and because of the energy some of them can’t sit in a place for a long time and in some case lack concentration – can’t start and finish a given task. Practical life exercises help children to develop patience and discipline. This patience and discipline translate into other areas of their life – to start and finish a task, delay gratification among others.

9.              It teaches the child appreciation for the universe: as the child learns to function in the society s/he will come to appreciate how things work thereby appreciating the universe by taking care of the universe and the things in the universe.

Practical life exercises is a socialization process that helps a child grow and develop, learn societal rules and regulations thereby functioning as a member of the society.

The Maria Montessori categorized Practical Life Exercises into four different groups:

• Preliminary Exercises
• Applied Exercises
• Grace and Courtesy
• Control of Moment.

Preliminary Exercises: Here the child learns the basic movements of all societies such as pouring, folding, and carrying.

Applied Exercises: Here the child learns about the care and maintenance that helps every day life. These activities are, for example, the care of the person ( brushing his teeth, washing of hands) and the care of the environment (sweeping, dusting).

Grace and Courtesy Exercises: Here the child work on the interactions of people to people such as how to greet, when to greet, and so on.

Control of Movement Exercises: Here the child learns about his own movements and learns how to refine his coordination through such activities as walking on the line.

Characteristics of Practical Life

Practical Life Exercises are meant to resemble everyday activities, therefore, it is important that all materials be

• Familiar: all the material must be found in the child immediate environment and the child has seen it.
• Real: Material for each exercise must be real so as to give the child real life experience.
• Breakable: Yes, breakable. Breakable materials, like plates and cup, will help the child to appreciate beauty, how to handle things and how to care for same.
• Functional: what the child can use and relate to.
• The materials must also be related to the child’s time and culture. In order to allow the child to fully finish the exercise and to therefore finish the full cycle of the activity, the material must be complete.
• Cultural: Practical life activities should reflect the culture of the child's environment, here and now. Choose activities which are prevalent in the culture. There should be no activities that have no relationship to the life the child is living. For example, if there are no windows in the environment there should be no window cleaning exercise.

Note:
As a parent or guardian , you must endeavor to demonstrate the correct way of doing these exercises in a way that allows the child to fully observe the movements.

Also, keep in mind that the goal is to show the actions so that the child can go off and repeat the activity in his own successful way. Montessori says, “Our task is to show how the action is done and at the same time destroy the possibility of imitation”. The child must develop his own way of doing these activities so that the movements become real and not synthetic.

What activities can you come up with to help your child? Will love to here from you.

In my next post I will outline 10 activities for each category of practical life exercise.