Like the Thrift, Pratt endeavored to teach his students the importance of moral improvement through practical participation. He started the Astral Apartments in 1886, but eventually decided that his students would work to educate the kindergarten at the Astral, while also enforcing ideas of moral improvement - that looked at teaching the workers there that their character had to be beyond doubt to live at the Astral and to benefit from the numerous advantages that Charles Pratt would aid them in.