Prepared environment in the kitchen

Children's independence is a continuous process and a Prepared Environment together with Practical Life activities, are essential to this.

Now that we have more certainty that we wont move to another country in the short term and have a green light to make physical changes to this house, we have again taken up our impulse to create an environment that supports Ian to “do for himself”.

We are planning ways to involve Ian in daily life activities while discovering what is suitable for our family. To that end, we have incorporated child-size furniture in the kitchen, the living-dining room and Ian’s bedroom. He is still getting used to all the changes and at the moment he’s only confortable with the prepared environment in the kitchen.

This is what we have done in the kitchen so far:

• Made room in our kitchen for a child-sized table for eating snacks and cooking.
• Allocate the bottom shelf in our refrigerator for Ian. Here we store his milk, yogurt and cheese.  

• Mount a low shelf for all the items necessary for Ian to set his table and prepare his own snacks: fruits, cereal, crackers, glasses, pitcher, plates, napkins, forks, spoons, knife, a cutting board and a sponge to clean the spills.

Here are some pictures of Ian in the business of making his snacks.

Serving his yogurt and cereal

Cutting cheese

Serving his milk. Oop! :-)

Getting water

Setting his table. This is something we are working on. I have to remind Ian what things to put on his table and mostly I have to help him to complete this task. Actually, he is not very interested in it yet.

Preparing a cup of coffee :-) just for fun and a good practice of spooning, measuring milk powder, sugar and decaffeinated coffee, stirring, tasting every ingredient and observing how color and flavor changes. A bit of practical life, sensorial, science and math ;-)