When Babies become Toddlers - practical life activities

What happens when your baby isn't a baby anymore? They start to waddle after you and copy what you do. They want to be involved in everything you are and don't leave you alone for a second....sound familiar? Well, here is a short guide to helping your child to become independent whilst you work together. 

This is the stage that Montessori introduces a lot of practical life activities. What is this? Well, basically all the day to day chores and things you do around the house. Washing up, watering the plants, cleaning the house, folding and sorting the washing - the list is endless. So how can you involve your toddler in these activities? Over the next week we'll be posting several simple activities that you can do with your child that may help to make your life a little easier, while helping your little person gain some valuable life skills.

All these tasks can be adapted as your child grows and is capable of more complex tasks. Always try to plan ahead and only offer your child the things you are prepared to deal with. For example, many activities involve water. If your child is young you may need to limit the amount of water to avoid huge floods in your kitchen. As our little guy is still young, we give him very little water for these activities (something around 100ml) and we always have a floor cloth handy to mob up the inevitable spills. But remember it's all part of learning and important for your child to learn act and consequence.

Watering the basil

Today we show you watering the plants. A few weeks ago we planted some basil and now it is shooting up nicely. Our boy just loves watering it every morning and is almost able to do so alone. As watering cans often spurt water all over the place and are great outdoors but rather awkward for small indoor plants, we adapted our own waterer. We used a small plastic bottle and got some screw on rose available from most garden centres or from Amazon. 

Our waterer

We put the plant pots on a small tray and place them on his table with the waterer and he does the rest. Very simple and he gets to care for a living thing. For older children it is fun to plant the seeds with them and maybe keep a diary of the progress. Just make sure you pick something that sprouts within a day or two otherwise they may get bored waiting!