Montessori lessons

A full hand-washing sequence at a child-height basin or a stool at the sink, done slowly enough for a toddler to copy.

Pouring rice or dried beans from one small pitcher into another on a tray, the classic first pouring lesson.

Moving dried beans from one small bowl to another with a spoon, one spoonful at a time, the toddler's first transfer work.

Pouring water from one small pitcher to another on a tray, and wiping up drips with a sponge, the step after pouring beans.

Short acted-out lessons in everyday manners: greeting someone, offering and receiving an object, interrupting politely, saying thank you.

Practicing buttoning and unbuttoning on a wooden frame with two fabric panels, so the child can master the movement before trying it on their own clothes.

Sweeping scattered beans into a chalk circle with a child-sized brush, then into a dustpan, then sweeping a real floor.

Folding small square cloths along stitched lines, first in half, then in quarters and on the diagonal, before moving on to real napkins and laundry.

Washing hands, peeling a banana, and slicing it on a small board with a crinkle cutter or a butter knife, then serving the slices.

Washing a small table with a soapy brush, then rinsing, drying and putting every piece away: one of the longest practical life sequences.

Filling a small vase through a funnel, trimming a stem to fit, setting the flower on a doily, and choosing a place for it in the room.

Dabbing polish onto a small brass or copper object, rubbing it in small circles, and buffing it until it shines, with the tray cleaned and put away after.

Removing ten knobbed cylinders from a wooden block and fitting each back into its own socket, discriminating size by sight and touch.

Building a tower of ten pink cubes, from 10 cm down to 1 cm, to see and feel differences in size across three dimensions.

Arranging ten brown prisms, all the same length but growing in thickness, into a stair from thickest to thinnest.

Feeling the difference between rough and smooth with washed, light fingertips on three wooden boards, the first exercise for the sense of touch.

Laying ten rods, 10 cm to 1 m long, side by side from longest to shortest, to judge differences in length by eye.

Pairing colored tablets by sight, three colors and then eleven, and later grading seven shades of one color from darkest to lightest.

Shaking closed cylinders to pair those that sound the same, then grading six of them from loudest to softest.

Lifting flat wooden shapes out of their frames, tracing each edge with two fingers, and fitting them back, from three contrasting shapes to drawers of near twins.

Reaching into a cloth bag, feeling one hidden object at a time, and naming it before pulling it out to look.

Taking apart and rebuilding a cube of eight colored blocks, matching faces by color and size, a puzzle that years later shows (a + b)³.

Handling ten pale blue wooden solids, feeling each with closed eyes, rolling them to see which roll and which stand still, and learning their names.

Taking apart and rebuilding a cube of 27 blocks in three colors, layer by layer, the harder sequel to the binomial cube.

Ten red-and-blue segmented rods, from 10 cm to 1 meter, that let a child see, carry and count quantities one to ten as single objects.

Tracing the numerals 0 to 9, cut from sandpaper on smooth boards, while saying each name, so the hand learns the shape of each figure.

Naming a unit bead, a ten bar, a hundred square and a thousand cube, so the child can hold and compare the categories of the decimal system.

Counting loose spindles into ten compartments marked 0 to 9, the first work where the numeral comes first and the child makes the quantity, and the first meeting with zero.

Sliding number cards 1 to 9 over the zero of a printed 10 to make and read 11 to 19, with a ten bar and a colored bead bar beside each.

Laying out the numerals 1 to 10 in order and placing the right number of red counters under each in pairs, which shows odd and even.

Adding four-digit numbers with color-coded tiles for units, tens, hundreds and thousands, the step between golden beads and paper.

Counting the hundred chain bead by bead with a label at every ten and folding it into a square, then counting the shorter squaring chains of 2 to 9.

Counting by tens from 10 to 90 with golden ten bars, then sliding unit cards over the zeros to build and read every number from 11 to 99.

Lifting the pieces of a circle cut into halves, thirds, fourths and on to tenths out of their frames, fitting them back, and learning the names of the parts.

Placing 100 numbered tiles on a 10 by 10 board in order, so the child sees the numbers 1 to 100 as rows of ten.

Laying a blue strip and a red strip end to end on a board numbered 1 to 18 and reading the sum above, to learn the addition facts to 9 + 9 by heart.

Tracing letters cut from fine sandpaper while saying their sounds, so the child learns each letter by sight, sound and the movement of writing it.

Spoken games of "I spy something that begins with /m/", played with objects and then with the whole room, so the child hears the sounds inside words before meeting a single letter.

Building short phonetic words from a box of cut-out letters, which lets a child write by sound before their hand can hold a pencil for long.

Tracing a metal frame and its shape in two colors, then filling the figure with even pencil strokes, to train the hand for writing.

Reading short three-letter word labels and matching each to a small object, the first step of the pink, blue and green reading series.

Matching picture cards and word labels, then checking them against control cards, worked here with the land and water forms the child already knows.

Reading short words that start with two consonants, such as frog and flag, and matching each label to an object, the step after the pink series.

Playing word games that show what a noun and a verb do, then marking each word with its symbol: a black triangle for the noun, a red circle for the verb.

Learning by sight the common English words that can't be sounded out, a few at a time, so the child can read whole phrases.

Learning letter pairs that make one sound, such as sh or ee, then reading words built from them, the step after the blue series.

Reading a card in silence that names an action, such as hop or "bring me the red pencil", and showing the reading was understood by doing it.

Building short sentences from color-coded word cards sorted in compartment boxes, one new part of speech per box, from article and noun up to all nine.

A globe with rough sandpaper land and smooth blue water, the first geography lesson for learning that the earth is made of land and water.

Watering a houseplant with a small can, wiping its leaves and removing dead ones, then sowing seeds and watching them grow.

A wooden puzzle of the world's continents with small knobs, used to learn continent names and shapes by handling them.

Pouring water into shallow trays that model an island and a lake, a peninsula and a gulf, and other paired forms, so a child can see each one in three dimensions.

Learning the names of the seven continents on a globe where each one is painted its own color, the second globe after the sandpaper globe.

Guessing whether ordinary objects will sink or float, testing each in a tub of water, and sorting them onto two mats.

Sorting real objects and pictures under two labels, living and nonliving, by asking whether each one grows and needs food and water.

Lifting flat green leaf shapes out of their frames, tracing their edges, and then finding real leaves of the same shape outdoors.

Matching small flags on stands to their countries, one continent at a time, starting with the child's own country and the places the family knows.

Taking apart wooden plant puzzles, naming each part, and finding the same parts on a real plant.

Taking apart wooden animal puzzles, naming the body parts, and comparing them with real animals and pictures.

Learning that the earth is one of eight planets going round the sun, and learning the planets' names in order, with a puzzle and a lamp.