Montessori Practical Life: Summer Fruits and Vegetables

Summertime brings a wide range of opportunities for you to introduce your child to fresh fruits and vegetables as you work with him or her at home.

Montessori Practical Life exercises can include such exercises as 1) growing plants and tending them, 2) picking the fruits or vegetables, 3) washing and peeling, 4) cutting and serving, and 5) joyful and spontaneous cleanup.

You can also include such projects as writing labels or drawing pictures of the fruit/vegetable with or without labels, drying fruits, making jam, and preparing and using everything in a salad or cooked meal.

For example, you can prepare 1) soil, 2) beans, 3)peat pots, 4) small watering can, and 5) a tray to introduce planting beans. As the beans grow, show your child how to make a small trellis for the vines -- you can use sticks or something more elaborate. Your child can put the pots by a window and watch them grow.

Let these exercises and projects become independent projects for your child, so that he or she can freely go water or taste the work in progress without your help. Once you present an exercise and material, your child should be able to work with it independently.

Children love to eat what they have grown and picked!