Working in Practical Life Skils

I'm trying to incorporate more practical life skills into the daycare day. Last weekend I bought a dishtub at Target - just a cheap white tub. I put dishsoap and water in it and set it on a chair during breakfast and lunch. After the children are done eating they put their plates, silverware, and cups in there. Right now it's food and all - a bit gross, but it still saves me a pre-rinse before I load the dishwasher and they are proud to clean up after themselves. With older children they'll be taught to scrape the dishes first. But I've only got two kids - my own and one full-timer. My full-time kiddo is just two and mine is 19 months old. I think they do great with it given their ages.

I'm open to other ideas on building independence. I am working on gathering materials to make some "works" for the kids. Right now I've completed one. I can't remember where I found the idea - not trying to steal it. I'm pretty sure I found it on a Montessori type blog. I put pom poms (the kind you get in a bag at the craft store) with a broom and dustpan for a "sweeping work." I put it all together in a tupperware container so that everything's all together. I got it out this morning and showed the kids how to use it. They had a great time. My older kiddo definitely got the hang of it. My own little one tried, but also wanted to eat the pom poms. This is definitely a supervised work with really young ones. Of course I think a lot of the works that I've looked at seem to be that way.

I've also started to refer to things as works. When my little one, Boo, got out the ring stacker I asked him if he wanted to work on stacking and helped him to work on it instead of throw the rings. My dc kiddo was mad that he wasn't working on the same thing. I finally got him to agree to work on a shape sorter. Granted, I left the room for a minute and their work pieces were thrown all over the place. Ah - such is life!

I haven't really spoken with my dc parent about this transition to Montessori-inspired. Honestly, I'm sure she'll be okay with it. I just want to do the approach justice when I explain it. So I plan to do more reading and researching and setting up of the environment.