Do we need practical life activities in Montessori classrooms today?

Practical life tray activities are considered the mainstay of Montessori classrooms, yet my Heinemann 1920 published copy of Dr Montessori’s Own Handbook (first published in 1914) gives a list of activities to enhance motor education as:

• Primary movement of everyday life (walking, rising, sitting, handling objects)
• Care of the person
• Management of the household
• Gardening
• Manual work
• The gymnasium
• Rhythmic movements

My edition also includes pictures of 8 “frames for lacing and buttoning”.

Montessori describes the children’s need to do things for themselves and this is where the care of the person with putting on shoes, washing hands, blowing one’s nose, feeding themselves and dressing comes from. This is also where the dressing frames fit – becoming a tool to developing a skill such as lacing or buttoning to make dressing independence easier for the child.

In the description of management of the household, which in today’s classrooms becomes care of the environment, Montessori describes children’s eagerness to assist with daily routines of the classroom such a setting table, washing up and helping with housework. These were done in the context of daily needs for smooth classroom management rather than as shelf activities.

So ask myself, where has this idea of “We have all 33 practical life activities available to the children on the shelves” come from?  Where did the colour-coded practical life ideas supporting a specific project such as winter with transferring plastic snow flakes originate?  I am fully aware I have been guilty of many of these too.

With time and by learning from my granddaughters and the children in our local toddler group, I wonder what these activities really mean to the children. What is their value? Has our focus of motor skill development, pincer grip and eye hand co-ordination as preparation for writing – or as I have seen recently, as preparation for AI – taken away the child’s agency to be an active player in the life of their little community?  Are we justifying these activities and their indirect and direct benefits at the cost of nurturing the children’s physical and social independence?

What are the skills of daily life that the children of today need?  Do we acknowledge how much they learn by watching and imitating their peers and adults around them as they navigate the life of dishwashers, the washing of trainers rather than polishing of leather shoes, commanding Alexa to play their songs or warming up their lunch in a microwave? Are we aware that the use of gadgets and technological tools which make our daily life easier is also an inextricable part of their lives?

And I continue to ask myself:

• How are we providing for the life of today in our classrooms?
• Do we always model grace and courtesy in every day contact with the children, their parents and colleagues?
• Do we acknowledge how much they learn just by watching life around them?
• And, do we then give them the time and space to make these skills and tasks their own as they plead with us – “MY DO IT”?

On page 25 of my copy of Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook she says “There is no need to ask them to do this work, for they come spontaneously – even little ones of two and a half years old – to offer themselves, and it is frequently most touching to watch their efforts to imitate, to remember, and finally to conquer their difficulty.

Do join us on Monday 2 December at 7pm CET for a webinar where, Jana Morgan Hermann, Montessori trainer, guide and colleague, and I explore some of these questions.

Register here.

-Barbara Isaacs, October 2024-