Advent Practical Life

This post is way overdue! At the beginning of December, I met with Deb and Sarah to see the practical life they were putting together for Advent in the Good Shepherd Atrium. They did a great job and I took pictures to share on the blog, but in the busyness of the holidays I failed to post them. So today, as Deb and Sarah put together the practical life shelves for the very short season of Christmas, I am finally getting these pictures out to you!! 

Thank you so much Deb and Sarah for all the skill you bring and time you put into making our atria materials beautiful and meaningful!

Sorting beautiful blue beads.

Attaching clothes pins.

Using tongs.

Beginning sewing.

Grasping.

Scooping and pouring.

Buttoning and unbuttoning. We have made a set of these which includes each of the
seasonal colors and will add more when the children learn the skill of buttoning!

Nativity Nesting doll set. I wish I had a picture of them separated. The children love them! 

Here is Deb hard at work!

The left shelf.

The right shelf.

Deb has a green thumb and always has something beautiful growing in the atrium!

To learn more about why we have practical life in the atrium check out this post!

Practical Life in the Atrium

As we begin our year together, I like to share some information about practical life in the atrium, which is so valuable but also easily misunderstood. Take a look at this post, called Why Practical Life?  to learn a bit more about how shifting beans from one bowl to another is meaningful work, and how polishing silver can be great preparation for prayer!

Meanwhile here are some photos of the practical life works we put together for the three to six year olds in the Good Shepherd Atrium this month. We always begin the year with simple works for our three year olds, and increase the difficultly as they develop their skills. Keep an eye out for the color green which points to the liturgical season - Ordinary Time or "Growing Time." We include the color of the season in our practical life whenever we can.

Moving beans from one bowl to the other develops the pincer grip.

Water is transferred from one bowl to the other using a sponge.
We place water in the left bowl, and color it green for the season.

Spooning beans into a pitcher and pouring them back into the bowl.

Sorting fruit.

Threading a card. There is a green string in the little jar.

Clipping clothes pins around the lip of the bowl. These are
new clothes pins made of bamboo and are so nice to touch!

Pushing pipe cleaners into holes.
A second step will be to add beads to the pipe cleaners.

Grasping stones with the whole hand and
shifting them from one basket to the other.

Learning to sweep up a spill.

Behind These Doors...

We keep all of our practical life supplies in this closet in the Good Shepherd Atrium. It's incredible what a mess it can become! To be honest, I am usually the person to blame for the disaster. I always seem to be changing practical life works in a hurry!

A few weeks ago I stopped in the Good Shepherd Atrium after Church and found Lynette bringing order out of chaos! She had ALL of the materials out of the closet and rearranged everything!

Now we have materials sorted by season...

...and by type!

Trays are stacked...

...and glassware is together!

What a blessing!

Thank you Lynette for your ministry with our children 

AND

for having a label maker and being willing to use it!!!

Little Surprises!

Today while I was cleaning in the True Vine Atrium I kept happening upon little vases of flowers that had been lovingly placed around the room. Sunday was our first session with flowers, and the children (and the catechists!) enjoyed them so much! Flower arranging is a great practical life exercise, and excellent preparation for future members of the altar guild! :)

Thank you parents for bringing us fresh flowers each week! I'm working on a new flower schedule, and will mail it to you soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy seeing some of Sunday's creations as much as I did!

Why Practical Life? Revisited!

Below is a re-post about practical life from over a year ago. (I've just celebrated my one year anniversary of blogging!). I though it might be helpful to our new families and to others who want to know more about practical life to post this information again. 

When we first began our atrium, I was skeptical about Montessori's Practical Life Exercises.  Don't get me wrong - I could see their value in a Montessori setting but I wasn't convinced that we needed them in the atrium.  We began with just a few basic activities, but I quickly discovered the spiritual dimensions of practical life, and now we can't get enough of it!  In fact, I first became interested in blogs as a way of hearing from some of the wonderful Montessorians on the web who write about their practical life exercises.  Setting up practical life, and changing it to meet the needs of the children as their skills develop over the year requires a good deal of observation and creativity, and I have come to enjoy it as much as the kids!

We have practical life activities in all of our atria, but by far the most can be found in the Good Shepherd Atrium (for 3-6 year olds).  Over the years, I have observed a strong connection between handwork and spirituality.  Pouring beans from one pitcher to another, moving water with an eye dropper, arranging flowers in a vase -- one only needs to observe a young child engaged in these activities to recognize the deep concentration, peacefulness and contentment that they can elicit.  Concentration, peace, and contentment are key attributes of prayer and meditation, and practical life builds up these attributes in the children better than anything else. As the child's capacity for concentration and joy in the presence of God grows, so does his or her ability to listen to presentations and mediate on the aspects of the Bible and the liturgy of the Church that we are offering in the atrium. 

In these first weeks, practical life will get quite a work out in our atria - and we catechists couldn't be happier!


For pictures of some of the practical life works featured on the blog this year, click here.

Tour of the Atrium: Clean Up

One aspect of the atrium that often surprises visitors is the fact that everyone seems to know what to do!  The children are very independent in the atrium. In this post and the next I'll be showing you some aspects of the environment that facilitate the children's independence. This first post looks at cleaning up.

In the atrium children know how to clean up after themselves and return materials to shelves ready for the next person. Beans are dropped and swept up, water is spilled and wiped away, polishing cloths are used, put in the laundry and replaced - all without the advice or help of an adult. This is possible because of the time we spend demonstrating these tasks for the children at the beginning of the year, and the skills the children need are often introduced and practiced in their practical life work.

Because we only see the children for a few hours each week, they sometimes need a reminder or adult help with clean up. But our goal is always to empower children to work independently and to be self directed (or Spirit directed!) as they move from activity to activity. The children themselves find it very satisfying! This arrangement also allows adults to spend their time presenting new materials to smaller groups of children and observing the children who are working.

Here are some areas of the Good Shepherd Atrium that allow the children to clean up independently:

We have no sink in our room. Instead on the left in the photo above is our water dispenser, where children and adults get the water they need for work. Water is disposed of in the bucket below. In the middle of the photo is a hand washing station for the children. On the right is a bowl for washing dishes used in atrium (such as the small bowls used in polishing, and the gluing brush and tray). There is also a towel for drying dishes hanging off to the right that I just missed in this picture!

Polishing cloths.

On the top shelf above are the small bucket and sponge used for cleaning up spills, tissues and hand sanitizer. The children use the cloths, sponges, and q-tips on the second shelf to replace the ones they use when working. The bottom shelf holds supplies for sweeping up spills on the table and on the floor, and wash cloths for drying hands and cleaning up spills.

A child-sized broom and sweeper that are used to clean up spills on the floor are kept along side the shelf above. There are practical life works designed to show the children how to use these tools and sweeping is a favorite!

The trash can, recycling bin, and laundry basket are next to the shelf on the other side and the children know which materials go into each and use them regularly.





Check back next week to tour other parts of the room that help keep the atrium running smoothly!

Practical Life Exercises for the Easter Season!

Here is a quick look at the new practical life works in the Good Shepherd Atrium this Easter! To learn more about why we do practical life in the atrium, read Why Practical Life?

A listening exercise - there are six sets of eggs (one blue and one yellow per set) and each set makes a distinct sound. The sounds come from the things we've put inside the eggs (such as rice, beans, a paper clip, rock etc.). Children listen and compare the sounds to find the matches and place them in the egg carton. I saw this great idea on Living Montessori Now.

A squeezing exercise. Children use the pitcher to pour water into the bowl and add the sponges to the water. Then they use the tea bag squeezer to squeeze the water out of each sponge and return it to the shell-shaped dish. After removing all of the sponges, children empty the water.

Using an eye dropper - Children fill the small pads on the soap holder using the eye dropper. When they are finished they use the dropper to remove the water and put it back into the bottle.

Nuts and bolts - Children match and attach the proper nut to the proper bolt on the gray mat, then return the nuts and bolts to their containers. We actually only put out three sets of nuts and bolts to begin this work. We will add the additional ones in a week or so to make the work more difficult.

A spooning exercise - Children use a small ladle to fill the butterfly with translucent marbles, then return the marbles to the pink dish. The butterfly is pretty, isn't it?

Children sort the flowers and use tweezers to place them into this piece of packaging I found along the way. The holes on the top row have a colored dot in them to indicate which color belongs in that row. When finished children return the flowers to the silver dish.

I love practical life!

Practical Life Exercises in Lent

At the beginning of the year I wrote about why we have practical life in the atrium, and I shared some photos of practical life exercises we had on the shelves at the time. Practical life changes regularly, and we try to make our practical life exercises point to the liturgical season as much as possible. I thought today I would share some photos of practical life exercises from the Good Shepherd Atrium this Lent.

This is a sifting exercise, where the child sifts the larger stones from the

smaller ones and puts them in the glass bowl. In Lent we try to use

 natural materials as much as possible.

This water transfer exercise is now done with a medicine dropper. We
incorporate the color of the Church year into our practical life
 works so in this season of Lent we are using purple. 

This is a transferring work, where the child moves an item from one
basket to the other using the whole hand. We have several types
 on nuts in this work now, which the children like to explore.

This is a work I made to highlight the colors of the year.  The children
 have already learned to use their pincher grip and attach clothes pins
 around the outside lip of a bowl. With this work the children match
 the colored clothes pins to the liturgical color wheel. 

This work is two sided - children who read can use the other side of the card

and clips to complete the work, and children can self correct by flipping

the wheel over for comparison.

In Church in Lent, we use arrangements without flowers on the
altar to acknowledge the more penitential and reflective aspects of
the season. During Lent in the atrium, parents bring greenery
purchased at the store, evergreens from their yards, pine cones,
or pussy willows for arranging into vases.  

This idea came from a great blog called Itty Bitty Love a few years ago. I cut
up the pages of a calendar and covered them with contact paper. This is
a beautiful calendar with images of sheep and the words of Psalm 23 which
calls to mind the Good Shepherd works for the children.

I also cut out and covered the tiny pictures from the back of the
calendar and affixed a velcro dot to each one.

The children match the small photo to the large one and attach it. When
they are finished they return all the small pictures to the basket. 

I have finally finished my Lenten preparations at home, and will share what my family is up to in my next post. Check back soon!