I Can Do It Myself

In this installment of Sunday Scaffolding, we use Montessori school supplies to help teach life skills.  On their website, www.forsmallhands.com has every possible tool to help kids learn independence in household tasks. And while we’re helping the kids to become independent, we will take all the support we can get.

This website has kid-sized rakes, brooms, pitchers and cups, safety knives, drying racks, squeegees, mops, dusters. They have books teaching about cooking, cleaning up and other life skills. They have kid-sized tools (hammers, screwdrivers, etc…) with books and kits that show how to use them. They even have a game that teaches kids how to match socks out of the laundry.  They have done so much of the work for us!

They also have more academic things if your child has an interest, and they have lots of books that focus on peace and coexisting with others. They have many early learning tools and musical instruments.

I am not a paid spokesperson for the website, but I have bought many things from them over the years to help my own kids learn these important life skills, even if my college kid has now blocked out all of these memories. 

If you’d rather not spend money on this kind of thing, just look at the website for ideas of how you might teach these skills or even which skills to tackle.  For example, sock matching seems like an easy one to do given the zillions of socks you already have at home, but the website might spark the idea to tackle that skill.

Or your kid could use Mikey’s strategy of using only one kind of sock, ever, therefore eliminating the need to match at all.  Love that kid!