Three Practical Life Activities

Here is some work that has been on the girls' shelves recently.

 I got this idea for squeezing water from a garlic press from The Wonder Years.  (Follow the link to see how she does it.)   I had a difficult time finding a garlic press that I felt could be managed by little hands.  This one I finally found at Safeway.

USING A SIEVE

This is another work idea from Amy.  The girls absolutely love this work and it has kept them interested for a good long time. For three straight days Rosebud tumbled half awake out of bed in the morning already asking to do this work. ;)

 The child pours the barley into the flour (my cornmeal didn't sift through as well as the flour when I did my test run -- which you should always do, by the way! :) and stirs it together with the scoop.  Then the scoop is used to place the mixture into the sifter and the child taps the sifter against her hand (or the side of the bowl) to separate the two ingredients.  Then the remaining barley is poured from the sifter into the glass cup.  One note on my picture:  I got rid of the cloth for cleanup after a few trys.  It doesn't do a thing to help the gigantic mess of flour all over that this work produces! :)  So I would suggest showing the child to go and get a little "crumber" (aka hand broom and dustpan) for clean up.

SILVER POLISHING

I made the apron from a cheap dish towel, cutting a hole to fit a child's head and folding and sewing a strip of cotton around the cut edges.  It didn't turn out very pretty, but it works.

The swan is some kind of salt holder I got at a thift store.  The girls also polish other "silver" things around the house -- silver-plated candlesticks, a vase, their baby cups.

The objects are laid out from left to right like in the above picture.

The child squeezes three drops of polish into the dish ($1.25 at Bed, Bath and Beyond).  The "applicator" (aka Q-Tip) is dipped into the polish and spread all over the silver object. (I don't have one, but often a sand timer is used to show the child how long to wait for the polish to dry on the silver.)  The cotton balls are then used to remove the excess polish and the "polishing cloth" (from a square of a soft recieving blanket) is used to give the final shine.  The sponge is for wiping up.  Then the dirty applicators and cotton balls are thrown away and replaced with new ones "for the next person who would like to use this work."  I have a few extra cloths in case that needs replacing.  I send the girls to the bathroom sink to wash out the polish dish, although in a classroom, there would be clean replacements waiting on a shelf.