Practical Life

• making beds,

• washing and folding laundry (teach children how to use the washing machine and dish washer)

• plan dinner, lunch, snack and breakfast menus

• dust

• polish with olive oil for wood, vaseline for shoes

• vacuum & sweep floors

• clean bathrooms

• organize the cupboards

• wash dishes, dry and put away

• disinfect door knobs, mailboxes, common surfaces

• clean the car, the garage, the refrigerator

• sweep the path or driveway

• rake the leaves

• prepare garden beds for planting

• plant seedlings indoors 

Observe and admire your work!

Matching Activity

• Use any items (blocks, pictures, etc…)

• Can work on matching based on exactly the same or similar.

Example, you could have two pictures of butterflies, one red and one blue…these would be similar and emphasise that. Or two blue blocks and those are exactly the same (same size, colour, shape).

• You can also just play a matching game if you have one at home, and just use a few cards at a time.

Sorting Laundry

• Allow your child to help go through clean laundry and sort through items, putting socks together, shirts in another pile, etc…

• Sorting also by items that belong to mum, dad, older brother, etc…

• Sorting by colour

Folding Washcloths

• Lay washcloths open on flat surface. Hold with pincer grasp two extremities, lift and bring to meet and line with other edge. Flip/rotate and do the same to fold in 4.

• Fold a few cloths.

• This is a first step in practising folding more complicated items.

Folding Clothes

To fold trousers: show child how to smooth out the legs, then hold one side with two hands and bring to the other side, rotate, then using two hands take and lift bottom of leg to waistband, rotate, and do the same (unless you only do one-fold) 

• This is one way…you can show your child they way you do it :)

Practical Life workshop parents handout link