6 Practical Skills I Learned in Kindergarten
How early Montessori education prepared me for the rest of my life.
“Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.” — Aristotle
Have you ever seen those shirts or sweatshirts that have finger holes built into the cuffs of the sleeves?
I thought my college roommate had one of these until she started telling me about all of the new holes in her favorite sweater.
“It’s my favorite sweater and I’ve had it for so long, but I guess I’m just going to have to throw it away.”
“Yeah, one of the buttons fell off my sweater the other day and I had to throw it out too,” my other roommate chimed in.
“What?”I couldn’t understand throwing out an otherwise fine piece of clothing for one missing button, or a couple of small holes around the seams. “Why didn’t you just sew it back on?”
They both looked at me blankly and then laughed.
“I don’t know how to sew,” said the one in the sweater.
“I can show you, it’s pretty easy.”
“Umm, I don’t think so. Doesn’t seem worth it.”
My college roommates had a mentality that I never quite understood about certain simple life skills. There were some things, such as sewing and cooking, that they had never learned and had seemingly no desire to learn. In fact, they made fun of me for learning such “useless” things in school.
And I sort of know where they’re coming from. I think it mostly comes down to pride. You reach a certain point in life, and almost feel frustrated by the realization that you haven’t learned how to perform a simple task like stitching up a seam or whipping up a batch of cookies, and it becomes both intimidating and, as they said, unnecessary. They’ve made it this far, they really don’t need these skills.
This is why I believe my school did it right when they taught us young. I think a lot of adults, particularly those of college-age who are just getting out on their own, are intimidated by the things that they didn’t learn, and a combination of stubbornness and resentment toward those who taught them growing up act as barriers to learning. Sewing and cooking aren’t inherently complicated, but to someone who has never tried, they are certainly daunting.
How to wash dishes
I went to a Montessori school, where we had to do a set amount of “tasks” during the day, and even though most of them were academic or chore-related, they somehow convinced us that they were fun.
I think part of the reason we enjoyed washing dishes at school was that we saw our parents doing it and it made us feel grown-up. I believe that parents setting a precedent at home that’s backed up by experiences at school ends up setting not just a good, but a memorable example for children.
But I’ll be honest here. I may have come home in kindergarten asking to do the dishes, but that desire did not carry over into the rest of my childhood. But that’s okay. The foundation was there, and for that, I am very grateful.
How to sew and embroider
Sewing became a huge hobby for me as a kid and a minor hobby for me as an adult. Back in school, we were taught sewing through embroidery. I believe this was because it’s very visual and easy to determine your progress, and of course, it’s creative and fun.
In kindergarten, we learned by sewing shapes and symmetrical designs in sewing hoops. By first grade, we had a “class quilt” where every year, each classroom would produce a quilt in which each student had their own square in which they embroidered a design. The designs were chosen for us but were given creative liberty with colors and accents. Overall, it was a fun project that nearly everyone enjoyed doing, and we learned something along the way (my favorite was the dinosaur quilt, where we even researched our type of dinosaur — I guess I’ve always been a nerd).
In middle school, I used to sew my own purses or “book holders” (purses that fit specific-sized books) out of old jeans, adding beaded designs and fun straps. I took a break from sewing as a hobby until college, when I picked up embroidering again and found that you can make fantastic personalized presents for very cheap.
Sewing is a great skill to have for so many reasons, but the main one is being able to fix your favorite clothes, blankets, napkins, dish towels, or whatever it is when it gets a little hole in it. No one likes to waste, lose money, or have to ditch a valued item for the lack of a simple skill.
How to sign your name in cursive
I know this is somewhat of a hot topic, but hear me out.
At my school, we were taught how to write in cursive before print, and of course, the first thing we learned how to write was our names. This means I’ve been signing my name since I was four years old, and I actually think I have a rather nice signature because of it.
Maybe it shouldn’t matter how you write. I know many people who strongly prefer one form over the other. Some prefer printing because they learned cursive late and don’t find it intuitive, and some prefer cursive for the speed and the intuition. Regardless, there is an argument for learning both forms of writing and right along with it, learning them early.
In fact, studies such as this one have indicated that learning cursive at a young age (around age 6) correlates with higher reading proficiency, better motor skills, and the ability to write quicker and with better accuracy.
I am grateful to have learned cursive young.
I write in both cursive and print, depending on my mood and the context. I learned in math class to always write variables in cursive because it’s harder to mistake them for numbers (my printed z looks exactly like my 2, for example). So, when I’m doing math, I tend to write in cursive. If I’m following along with a lecture, a video, or in a class I also tend to use cursive or sometimes a combination of the two, whichever is more efficient at the moment.
The basics of cooking and baking
Another thing my college roommates once said that stuck out to me is that they didn’t know what individual herbs taste like, and thought it was weird that I assumed they did. I don’t think I was being too presumptuous (I probably just asked them what they thought of the cilantro in the rice we had for dinner), but they seemed surprised, and again a bit defensive about their lack of expertise on the subject.
Now, I’m not here to pretend I know what all herbs taste like. In fact, there are many herbs that I use frequently on the basis of “Well my sauce always tastes better when I stick oregano in it, so I’m going to use oregano,” or some similar logic (I’m just realizing that I probably don’t actually know what oregano tastes like). But when I was a kid, my grandparents had a big, lovely herb garden with ones like basil, chives, lemongrass, and multiple kinds of parsley. I used to eat them all the time while playing in the garden, so I learned what most basic herbs tasted like pretty quickly.
When I was a kid, every week in school, a parent or grandparent would come in and cook. Their child would pick a few friends, and they would all cook as a group. I still remember making things like baked ziti, apple pie, and Black Forest cake. But aside from those times, we would always prepare special foods for holidays and festivals, like popcorn balls for Christmas or apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah. From these, our teachers would teach us lessons on food safety, kitchen safety, and how to properly hold a knife.
Of course, we weren’t using sharp knives in kindergarten, nor should we have been. Over the years, the kids get more involved in the cooking as they mature enough to do so. But the intrigue was sown simply by getting us involved, even if only in a minor way.
Kindness and manners
This one should be a given, but I’m not sure that it is. The number of people I’ve met since college who seem to revolt at the idea of pushing in a chair is astounding. The act of pushing in your chair isn’t just courteous, it’s habitual. Like all good habits, it can be a tough one to form, and like all bad habits, not pushing in your chair can be tough to break.
In school, we were taught to always push in our chairs. It was wonderful. There were no chairs out in the middle of the room, begging to be walked into, and no question as to whether someone left their chair out because they had temporarily gotten up and was coming back. All of the chairs were tucked neatly under their respective tables at all times (well, when they weren’t being sat in).
Pushing in your chair is a product of “leave everything the way you found it.” This model was drilled into us at school and in the Girl Scouts, and I believe that it is in fact one of the most important lessons in manners, and in kindness, that one can learn.
Don’t leave things out where people can trip over them and injure themselves. Don’t leave things out to get damaged. Don’t leave things out for others to put away. Don’t leave things out to become litter and pollute.
Simple sustainability
Sustainability and ecology were huge in my school, and I didn’t even know it. I don’t even recall hearing the word “sustainability” until I was in middle school. But the lessons were there.
We weren’t allowed to bring in disposable containers, napkins, utensils, or pre-packaged foods for lunch. We were required to bring a cloth napkin and a placemat to keep the table clean and limit the necessity for paper towel use. Essentially, we were very much discouraged from using single-use (particularly plastic) products.
I never thought much of these rules until I switched schools and was made fun of for having a placemat and a cloth napkin. I was so embarrassed, I didn’t really know how a normal kid ate lunch. Apparently, they didn’t take everything out of their lunch box and neatly place them onto a cloth placemat with a matching napkin folded next to it.
For years I thought that my old school was just “fancy” and was embarrassed that my habits seemed sort of elitist. But I eventually realized that they almost the opposite. Using exclusively reusable items is both more economical and greener.
Good habits are easy to build young, and harder as you age
I picked on my college roommates a bit earlier in this post, but I suspect that their feelings are common among college students. It’s around that age that we start to realize what we don’t know, and it’s scary. It’s overwhelming. It’s intimidating.
As we get older and spend more time on our own, it becomes easier to bite the bullet and choose to learn new skills, even if learning them doesn’t end up being as easy as it seems.
None of the skills and habits listed here are particularly difficult, per se, but learning a new skill or habit is a difficult task in and of itself. If you’ve lived to adulthood, you already know this.
But some are worth it.
The skills that are most worth picking up, at any point in your life, are those that make you feel good and make others feel good. These might be the manner-oriented habits like pushing in your chair, holding the door open, cleaning up after yourself. Or they may be the ones that foster independence, like mending clothes, cleaning the dishes, or learning to cook simple meals. Likely, they will be both.
I learned some less useful “practical” skills in school as well, like polishing silver (I think I’ve done this less than a handful of times in my entire life since then), but even from them, I still learned practical lessons. Like patience. Like mindfulness.
Sometimes, the “silly” things we learn in school teach us lessons beyond those explicitly stated. We learn how to learn by doing homework, we connect with nature by playing outside at recess, and we learn how to slow down by mending holes in our shirts.
I am grateful for the education I had as a young child, and although I’m sure I am just as obstinate about learning certain simple things as my college roommates were, I like to think I have been spared a bit of adult stubbornness as a result.
