Montessori in a Minute: Opening Bottles

In our Toddler, Bridge, and Primary Montessori classroom, our shelves feature everyday objects that most adults and older children take for granted, like pouring bottles, tongs, folding, and twist-open bottles. For our Toddlers and Primary children, a set of Opening Bottles is a preliminary Montessori Practical Life material, a gateway that leads to independence and further discovery.

How to Use This Material

Our set of opening bottles is not much different from the bottles and jars people use at home. We encourage our parents to do this activity with their young children. Plain bottles or jars without labels are ideal, since extra visuals can be distracting. Offer children containers with different types of lids. This additional challenge encourages your child to use visual discrimination to match each top with its base. As a child masters this activity in the Montessori classroom, they progress to more challenging work, such as the enriching Montessori Smelling Bottles in the Sensorial Area.

The Importance of the Opening Bottles

Opening and closing containers is powerful work for young children. It strengthens hand-eye coordination, fine motor control, and dexterity—engaging all ten fingers and developing the pincer grip needed for gripping a pencil and writing. All preliminary activities, like opening bottles, pouring, tonging, transferring, folding, and twisting, build coordination, motor skills, and essential pre-writing abilities. It also builds muscle memory which later will help them with the concepts of clockwise and counter clockwise. Mastery of these activities gives children confidence and builds up their concentration. Concentration is the most foundational skill a child needs to master and excel in math, phonics, science, and higher learning.

The Montessori in a Minute Series

The Montessori In A Minute series regularly explores the unique benefits of Montessori philosophy, its fundamental materials, and areas of the classroom. For all parents at Hudson Montessori School (Jersey City, New Jersey), we host Montessori Parent Education Events annually to teach parents about the Montessori method and how students learn using a Montessori framework. At Hudson Montessori, a child’s education is a partnership between school and home, working together to support a student’s learning journey.

Contact us to learn more about Hudson Montessori School's theme-based learning approach to education, the Montessori philosophy and methodology, or how the school fosters the love of learning for children aged 2 to eighth grade.