How do exercises of practical life and sensorial activities contribute to child development - Essay Example

Practical Life, Sensorial Exercises and Child Development If a Montessori teacher is asked about the most efficient and effective curriculum exercises which help in child development, then she will most probably answer that they are practical and sensorial exercises. It is understood that children learn from their surroundings. They adopt things very quickly. Practical exercises are everyday basic exercises which do not need any special tools to learn. They teach the child how to live life in a determined way.

Same is the case with the sensorial activities. This paper will discuss the importance of practical and sensorial activities and how they help and contribute toward the development of a child. It should not be difficult to understand that children learn from what they see, and experience. Through their senses and daily observations they learn different things. Practical and sensorial activities makes a child learn more efficiently as he is able to make simple associations of things regarding this world and everyday life around him.

These activities shape those experiences into a simplified and understandable form. Moreover these exercises also help the child to achieve and organize coordination of the movements. This helps him in becoming independent and accepting his surrounding society. The basic aim of these exercises is the ultimate positive result that contributes towards the child development (Sasse). Moreover, the practical exercises help him to improve his movement and get his attention. To strengthen and empower his will practical exercises are efficiently designed and practiced (Martin and Fabes).

From the very first day a child comes into this world, he witnesses different things in this man made environment around him. He observes things and wants to become a part of it. He slowly gets familiar with them and shows high interest so that he can also take part in it as other individuals in the society. The practical exercises are simply the constructivism of the child and his development. Through practical exercises a child learns different things such as eating, pouring, sweeping how to button his shirt, polishing etc.

This helps in concentrating on different things particularly social awareness. The basic aim of such exercises is that the child gets to know the correct order of things in the society and the environment he is living in. He gets to learn what are the limits and opportunities in this world and when and how he can utilize them or become creative towards them. However practical exercises are further divided into four parts; care for self and other, movement, care of surrounding / environment, and the grace and courtesy (Martin and Fabes).

However, sensorial activities are also aimed to have the same impact on child development, but they differ in their nature from that of practical exercises. The sensorial activities are usually a part of the child’s Montessori curriculum. These exercises / activities help the child to learn different physical properties of things around him. These are aimed to make him learn properties such as size, matter, color, shape and the measurements of different things. He also learns the two dimensional and three dimensional possibilities.

These exercises help in drawing the attention of а child toward the physical matter only. Through such activities a child learns how to hold a pencil for writing purpose. While sensory activities also include memory and grading exercises (Martin and Fabes). Moreover, sensorial activities play an important role in shaping child’s concentration. He is able to improve his reasoning abilities. The exercises are aimed to develop the scientific method for observation with the help of relevant materials.

The material is specially made which differentiates it from other stimuli (Sasse). When children see adults doing different things they find interest in it and want those things to do themselves. They feel a part of this world and try to become important through what they do. The children feel pride in doing things by themselves, once they get to learn how to comb their hair or how to get dressed they will not ask you to help them and will keenly do all of it by themselves. Through these exercises they start to care for themselves as well as for the environment / surrounding which is also another aim of these exercises (Sasse).

The role of a teacher is also very important in Montessori as the demonstration made by the teachers is what teaches and guides the children for their later development. Moreover they also have to ensure that the children are making the correct use of these exercises if something is not correct with the exercise or the children is adapting anything wrongly then the teacher should go through the demonstration again so that the child may learn correctly and it will not affect the positivity of the development (Crosby Bergin and Bergin).

The practical and sensorial activities are there to help the child so that he may get familiar with the environment and the world. Such exercises help and aim in child development and give them confidence and they feel proud by doing the small tasks all by themselves, they feel independent. Therefore it can be strongly concluded that these exercises contribute a lot towards the development of children and they learn skills and abilities which can help them in diverse areas of life and will also help them in their later development.

Works Cited Crosby Bergin, Christi Ann and David Allen Bergin. Child Development in Your Classroom. Mason: Cengage Learning, 2002. Print. Martin, Carol Lynn and Richard A. Fabes. Discovering Child Development. Mason: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print. Sasse, Margaret. Smart Start: How Exercise Can Transform Your Child's Life. Wollombi: Exisle Publishing, 2009. Print.