napkin rolling and folding

Napkin folding and rolling are practical life activities that can become part of your child's a daily meal routine. You don't need fancy napkins or napkin rings. You can make your own napkin rings by cutting toilet paper or paper towel tubes and decorating them with ribbon or fabric. If you use paper napkins, you can still roll them, but you can pick up cloth napkins fairly inexpensively and wash them along with your laundry. It is nice to have larger diameter rings for younger children, like the red ones below:

It doesn't have to be perfect!

This is a holiday set. No, I don't iron my cloth napkins. =)

rocking the Pfaltzgraff

If you don't want to roll, or don't have rings, the folding task is also useful to learn. H generally folds all of our washcloths and small towels now when I'm doing laundry, which is helpful for me and fun for him.  Traditional Montessori folding is shown here and described in impressive detail here. Folding in quarters works for us, so that is what we do! You can try experimenting with fancy napkin folding, too!