Montessori elementary exercises

In Montessori early years education, there is a wide array of elementary exercises. These Montessori elementary exercises have both direct and indirect aims.

Examples of direct and indirect aims in Montessori elementary exercises

Some elementary aims in Montessori might be to improve hand-eye coordination, balance, dexterity, patience, independence, and self-reliance. The indirect aims of Montessori elementary exercises might be to teach care or the awareness in helping others in school or in the home.

All Montessori elementary exercises foster love and respect in the growing child.

What are some elementary exercises in Montessori?

An example of these Elementary exercises in Montessori might be spooning beans from one bowl to the other, pouring water from one jug to the other, or whisking.

Grasping

Grasping material from one bowl to another bowl is a Montessori Elementary exercise that would usually be presented first to develop certain skills as well as hand and finger muscles development.

Spooning

There will be exercises in the Montessori Preliminary area that require children to spoon material from one bowl to another. This is important for children to develop different skills including being able to move the spoon from one bowl to another without tipping everything off.

Pouring

Children learn to pour from one container to another. This activity in Montessori Practical Life Elementary area has different aims for children, such as improving balance, hand-eye coordination, and develops important skills in children.

Spooning and Pouring

This Montessori Practical Life Elementary activity is a combination of two elementary skills, spooning material from one bowl into another and pouring material from one bowl into another.

Sponging

In the Montessori Practical Life classroom, children will sponge and squeeze water from one bowl to another. Sponging teaches our children that water can be soaked up by the sponge and kept there until squeezed out and also helps promote hand muscle development.

Teaching children how to use clothes pegs

This is a wonderful Elementary Practical Life activity found in Montessori classrooms. Children will learn to clip pegs onto the side of a bowl. This helps develop many skills in young children.

Tonging

In a Montessori Practical Life classroom children will be encouraged to strengthen their finger muscles in certain activities, for example, ‘Tonging’ in the Montessori Elementary area.

Tweezing

Tweezing beads onto a soap pad is a fun and useful Elementary exercise in a Montessori Practical Life classroom, that develops many different skills for young children.

Opening and Closing Boxes

This Practical Life Elementary exercise is a very much loved activity by children. They learn how to take off the lids of boxes and put them back on the box. Opening and closing boxes teaches children different things such as size and shape, dimentions and problem-solving.

Opening and Closing Bottles

This Elementary exercise is very similar to opening and closing boxes. Instead of using boxes, children open and close bottles, or screw and unscrew bottles.

Sorting objects of the same colour

This is a wonderful activity in the practical Life Elementary class which children are usually drawn to and enjoy doing. Children sort objects of the same colour.

Dropper exercise

This Elementary exercise is one that many Montessori children love to work with. Children will use dropper bottles with water to suck up water and let it go again.

Lock and key

This Montessori Elementary exercise is one that many Montessori children are fond of and is very popular in the practical life classroom. Children will learn how to unlock and lock keys into child-size locks. Children need to figure out which key is which.

Nuts and bolts

Children learn how to screw nuts onto bolts in this Elementary Practical Life activity. This exercise is usually quite difficult and takes much skill to master this activity.

Whisking

Children will learn to whisk soapy water and see the bubbles appear. Children thoroughly enjoy this Elementary practical Life activity.

Sorting the same color buttons but different sizes

The child will be asked to sort the same color buttons but they different sizes, the same-sized buttons must be together for example all the circles, squares, triangles, rectangles need to be all together.

Cloth folding

Here the children will learn how to fold sheets of material along different lines. For example, there will be a dotted line going vertically, horizontally, diagonally, etc, all on different pieces of material, the child will learn how to fold correctly, tracing down the line, and folding precisely on the line.