On the weekend I took my daughter to a cafe to catch up with a friend. My daughter is usually happy to sit in a cafe and enjoy a babychino whilst enjoying some colouring and stickers. But for some reason she was completely off on this day and pushed every button I had, testing my patience. It took all my self-control to stay calm and when we got in the car I decided I needed to change the direction our day was going, so I drove to Bunnings so we could pick out some flowers together to plant – my daughter loves flowers, so I knew this would be a hit.
When we arrived, she naturally picked the flowers I liked the least, as toddlers do, but was very happy with them so we added them to the basket. Next we went looking for a small shovel to add to her collection but instead, we found a toddler sized broom. My daughter was so excited. It was under $10 and I’ve already seen how much she loves playing with a dust pan so I had to buy it!
She spent the afternoon sweeping absolutely nothing around on the floor so I decided to set up a little activity for her. The pom-pom sweep. I have seen many people post about this before but I wasn’t sure if my daughter (only just turned two) would understand the concept.
Setting up the pom-pom sweep activity
First I marked out a square on the floorboards using painters tape. My husband was slightly displeased that I was using his very expensive painters tape for this. But honestly, why is there even painters tape that’s close to $20 a roll? And who in their right mind buys it!?
So once I had my square marked out, I tossed my bag of pom-poms that we often use in our Ikea Flisat sensory table, onto the floor. I spread them out and demonstrated how the activity worked. The aim was for my daughter to sweep all of the pom-poms inside the tape. To my surprise, she understood the activity perfectly and took great pleasure in getting all the pom-poms on the inside of the square, quickly asking for ‘more’.
We did this many times before moving onto a different activity. My next step, to continue to tap into teaching my daughter practical life skills through the Montessori approach of play, is to have her scoop up the pom-poms in her dust pan and return them to the play table or back into a container.
I love how this simple activity brought her such joy and was teaching her an essential life skill. Who knows, perhaps in the future my robot vacuum will be rewarded with a day or two off if her sweeping skills take off!
To read more about how you can implement practical life activities into your home following the Montessori approach, click here.