Montessori Practical Life: Care of Plants

Taking Care of Your Environment, Inside and Out

Caring for the Plants Around the House or Classroom

It's natural for children to want to do real work:  polishing shoes, cutting and arranging flowers, folding napkins, peeling potatoes, sewing on a button, .... the list goes on and on.  These are all things a young child is likely to see older people (older children and adults) doing.  In order to take part in the same work a young child has to first master the simpler components of these jobs.  For instance, a child has to practice pouring in order to pour his own milk and prepare his cereal at breakfast.  Or a child needs to be able to walk while carrying a tray if she is to be able to carry a food prep work from the shelf to a table.

This work, Care of Plants, is no different.  Many of us have indoor plants at home or in the classroom (Aldi's has a great selection!), and they need regular care.  In this first video, I demonstrate how to check the soil to see if the plant needs to be watered and then I trim off and remove dead leaves.

In this second video I demonstrate how to use a cotton ball to wipe dust off of the leaves.  Then I mist the plants leaves with water.

It would be easy for this work to lead into a simple science lesson, but it also important on its own.  Please be careful:  some plants are toxic to children and to pets!

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Float or Sink

This Rubbermaid 2.5 quart food prep container is the perfect size for this tabletop work.

 Science lessons can be so simple!  "Float or Sink," for example, is a simple work that "Alleluia" loves.  All that you need is:

• Clear, deep plastic tub (at Sam's you can buy these in the food prep aisle)
• Basket to hold items to be tested (mine was less than a buck at Target's on clearance)
• Towel to put under your work area
• Index cards labeled "FLOAT" and "SINK"
• (Optional)  Child-sized apron
• Random objects to test, such as:

Pine cone, buckeye, maple tree seeds (aka "helicopter seeds")
Tops to the milk or OJ containers
Cork (mine is a coaster but you can use a good old wine cork)
Chalk
Rock
Wax candle
Styrofoam (salvage from a box)
Ping-pong ball, other balls
Various floating toys (such as a fish taken from our toy fishing set)
Painted wooden block
Soap (both Ivory and another kind of bar soap)
Coin (beware of choking hazards, though!)
Jingle bell, paper clip

We've added things to our "Float or Sink" basket over time.

You can lay the index cards out on the towel to separate two columns, one for items that float and one for items that sink.  Talk about what kind of things float first, such as things that hold air, things made of wood, etc.  Then ask the child to predict whether the item will float or sink.  Sometimes you'll be surprised yourself!  You can introduce the term "buoyant" and "gravity" and "surface."  Older children may be interested to note that while a bar of Ivory soap floats, most others will sink.  Why?

Do you have any other ideas for items to put in our basket?

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Simple Science: The 3 States of Matter for Toddlers (It's FREE!)

I still remember the simple demonstration I saw 40 years ago:  My teacher put an ice cube on a metal spoon, held it over a flame, and the ice melted.  I was mesmerized!

The three states of matter:  liquid, solid, gas.

It's THAT EASY to give your small children a simple science lesson, and it's free to boot.  Start by showing them water (liquid), ice (solid) and an empty jar (gas).  Explain that these are all the same substance, but they are all present in a different form.

For this demonstration we put a small cookie sheet in the freezer for about 5 minutes.  Then we boiled water, showed the children the steam, and "Gandalf" held the cold metal sheet above the pot.  Right away the steam condensed into water on the cookie sheet, and some even froze!

Finally, I held a metal spoon containing an ice cube over the lit candle you see above.  The ice melted, the water dripped down (causing an exciting "sizzle"), and the water eventually put the candle out!

This took less than 10 minutes, but the 5 toddlers present (ranging in age from almost 20 months old to 3 years old) were all captivated!

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H2Oh! A Toddler's Best Friend

 Whether you have a backyard or not, a baby pool or just a really deep dish of water in a cramped condo, did you know that water can be your best friend?  Toddlers and water together require careful supervision, but they need little help from us to provide entertainment and, sometimes, learning!

We like to toss different things in the water and guess what will float and what will sink.  An occasional ice cube is a cheap toy and no worries with storing it (just watch out for choking).

If the kids like to play with squirt guns, show them how to fill them up by submerging the empty ones in water until bubbles stop coming up.  You can explain that the water is taking the place of the air.

The feather floats!

Get a watering can that's small enough for your kids to use.  Water wheels are fun, too, and can be used with sand as well.

You can buy a spider (this wire and bamboo kitchen implement) in the kitchen essentials aisle and use it to fish ping pong balls out.  We have tons of shells that we put in the water and in our sandbox, but I didn't notice how beautiful these barnacles were until they were all wet.

This big piece of driftwood floated for a little while, but when we returned from doing errands it had sunk.  It was the topic of conversation with even the older children:  Why would it sink?  (It was waterlogged!)

Extensions

• lessons on the three states of matter:  gas, solid (toss an ice cube in), liquid
• "painting" bricks and dry wood with water
• point out bubbles everywhere (inside the ice cube, in a boiling pot of water, in the pool when you kick really hard, etc)

Bubbles and water go together......

A vaporizer that makes mist can be fascinating!

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