rom dustpans to dishwashers Helen Wheatley adapts practical life activities to high-tech homes

At school Becky washes and dries the tea cups, sweeps up the biscuit crumbs with a small broom and washes and rinses the tea towel and hangs it on the line to dry. At home her mother fills up the dishwasher, races round with a vacuum cleaner and pushes the laundry into the washing machine.

Montessori's practical life activities were developed to help children become responsible for their world and to form a familiar link between school and home. Her ideas are as sound as ever but in the ninety-four years since they were developed homes have changed a great deal. If anything, learning to sweep a wash up is even more valuable to sophisticated children from high-tech homes. Equipping them with skills which address the underlying nature of any task stands them in good stead whenever they need to go back to the basics. But it is probably true that cleaning brass in nursery school is now enjoyed more for its novelty value than because it is something a child will need to do time and time again at home.

At home children now have other skills to learn with the push-button equipment that surrounds them on all sides. Because dishwasher, stereos and high-tech machines are expensive, electric and prone to mishap, they are usually barred from touching them. We worry about accidents, but also mistrust the child. If we show her how to press a button we think she will always want to press it and so we impose a blanket "don't touch". Televisions, stereos and washing machines then become particularly enticing because they are taboo.

The point of this article is not to encourage parents to give their children free rein with potentially dangerous equipment but simply to demonstrate how a few Montessori principles can equip children with basic skills in the world of adult machines. There are no tiny Hoovers and child-sized washing machines at school so only parents can teach and encourage modern practical life skills at home.

Practical life skills in schools are taught using a slow, step-by-step approach, the important aspect being that the teacher does not talk. Pre-school children are not good at absorbing verbal messages because they are still sensitive to the rhythm and structure of speech, and that is what they 'listen' to when you speak to them. It is better for children to watch the whole task at a slow enough speed for them to be able to remember and copy it. Once you know this it is relatively easy to demonstrate a task, like putting a cassette in a tape machine, but the important thing is to plan your demonstration beforehand almost as if it were a performance you will make for the child. When Montessori teachers train they learn precisely how to demonstrate each piece of equipment to the child smoothly and without variation. A demonstration with a cassette might go like this: Take the cassette out of its case, put it on the table, and close the case, very slowly and precisely, without saying a word. The silence and the precision with which you work are in themselves interesting to the child. If the child is not interested just put it away without comment; if she watches successfully she will want to practise the new skill so leave the cassette out for her to practise with. As soon as she performs the task well, move on to a demonstration of how to load the cassette into the cassette player before boredom and eventually, destructive behaviour sets in.

Of course, you would not be teaching this skill to a two-year-old, but there are things about the house you can show to a very little child: sorting the washing - even tinies can put white things in one pile and coloureds in another, and help to push the sorted clothes into the washing machine. I can hear parents saying, "oh, mine wouldn't be content with that, she'd want to start it as well." Perhaps she could. I am a great believer in showing children how to do things properly, rather than continually forbidding things and then having to make sure the children aren't ding them. Later you can show her how to take the washed clothes out and how to peg things on the line or transfer them to the tumble dryer. Show only one new task at a time, because she will only remember the last thing she heard, if the message is long.

Now move on to the dishwasher: you can show your child how to scrape leftovers into a bucket and put plates in the racks at the bottom and the cups to the top. When the dishes are clean and have cooled down you can demonstrate how to lift them out and sort plates and saucers into piles or pass cups to you to be put away.

You will find any number of small tasks from filling the pepper grinder or the dog's bowl to putting on a CD, which are humdrum to an adult but fascinating to a small child. Children who have been shown carefully, quickly become of real help. Doing a real job properly increases their sense of pride and their desire to do well, something which is often lacking in adults - perhaps because their parents said "Go away and play, you're too little to do this" when often it was just too much trouble