Montessori Practical Life: Folding Clothes

Friday, 16 January 2015

We're back from our 3 weeks vacation and it was amazing! Now I'll save details on a separate post, for now allow me to show you how Mavi has been very helpful for the past few days.  I give credit to the years of training of practical life activities based on Maria Montessori philosophy.

The traditional work in the family is known as the practical life work and is the most important area of an education for  life. These practical life activities provides children the  groundwork for physical, mental and social development.   And what’s more important is that it’ll teach them the work habits that will lead to success in academic and in all aspects of life later.

One of the chores I dread doing is folding the laundry.  My husband usually do this for me, but since he's busy most of the time, the folding doesn't get done and the laundry would pile up at times.  Now this is where Mavi comes in handy.  I gave him the responsibility of folding his own clothes, sort and put them directly in his closet.

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To start with,  Mavi would sort his own clothes from the pile of laundry.

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I placed masking tape on his shirt, pants and underpants and these serves as a guide for folding.  There's a number on the tape to indicate which one he will fold first. 

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He enjoys folding as he finds the approach “scientific” due to the order of how you fold a piece.

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For now, I’m giving him the task to fold his own clothes. Once he masters this, then he can fold his little brother’s clothes.

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At the end, he's happy that he was able to help, felt accomplished and proud that he was able to contribute something for Mommy.

More practical life activities can viewed in my Pinterest Board:

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This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

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Amazing blogs involved in the 12 Months of Montessori Learning

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama's Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Every Star Is Different ~ Child Led Life ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler

4 comments:

  1. What an inspiring post! Some of our kiddos can fold napkins, but we have a long way to go before they fold clothes. I never would have thought of the tape idea. We can't use it due to Bulldozer's adhesive allergy, but I wonder what else would work as a substitute. The thought of not having to fold laundry... I'm loving it!

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  2. Using the tape is such a great idea. I love this lesson :)

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  3. I love the way you used masking tape on the clothes to show where they were to be folded. We hang all our boys shirts, but they help with the folding and putting away of rest of their clothes.

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  4. Great job teaching your boy how to fold his own laundry. I love it! This practical life activity will be in our future. ;)

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