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e-year-old boy had been working with the Geometric Solids in my classroom. On the weekend, his family took a drive out to the countryside. His mother reported that her son, seeing a grain silo for the first time, pointed to it with great excitement and said, “Look, Mom. There’s a cylinder with a cone on top!”<\/p>\n
Why is the Sensorial curriculum so important in the primary classroom? Maria Montessori emphasized that there is a sensitive period for children, ages three to six, “when there is a natural inclination to perfect one’s senses and movements.” (Discovery of the Child) Understanding that young children learn by moving and exploring through their senses, Montessori developed the elegant Sensorial apparatus, which introduces abstract concepts (for example, long, broad, tall) with concrete objects.<\/p>\n
Isolating One Quality<\/p>\n
The Sensorial materials help children explore and refine the five classic senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, as well as the complex senses of thermic (temperature), baric (weight), and stereognostic (identifying objects by size and shape, based on touch alone). Each material isolates one quality, such as color, shape, roughness, or length, and then varies just that one quality. This isolation of what’s different in just one aspect allows children to perceive the “Piagetian cognitive skills such as one-to-one correspondence, classification and seriation.” (Chattin-McNichols,\u00a0The Montessori Controversy<\/em>)<\/p>\n Sensorial Games and Variations<\/p>\n We can challenge a child who has mastered the basic presentations of the Sensorial apparatus by showing games such as matching from memory, grading from memory, and then adding complexity by grading from any point in the series. For example, place the Red Rods on one rug and then carry a medium length Red Rod to a second rug on the other side of the classroom. Ask the child to fetch the Red Rod that is “the next longer than this one.” Vary this activity by asking for the rod that is the next shorter. These same games can be played with many of the Sensorial materials such as the Bells, Pink Tower, Brown Stair, and Sound Boxes.<\/p>\n The more complex exercises and variations are intended to spark interest in the child to continue to work with and explore the materials. Montessori stressed that children will spontaneously experiment with and create many combinations and patterns with the Sensorial materials. Rather than demonstrating these combinations, allow children to discover them!<\/p>\n We can ask open-ended questions to encourage children to use the Sensorial materials in a different, creative way: “Are there any other objects in the room that look like the sphere?” In this way children might discover that the globe is a sphere and the light cover on the ceiling is a sphere. Children may discover on their own the relationships and similarities between the Pink Tower and the Brown Stair, or between the Knobbed and Knobless Cylinders.<\/p>\n Sensitize the Fingertips<\/p>\n Many teachers don’t show children how to\u00a0sensitize their fingertips<\/a>, which is an activity that will optimize experiences with the tactile materials (the Rough and Smooth Boards, the Sandpaper Letters). Show children how to soak their fingertips in warm water and then gently stimulate the fingertips while drying them with a towel. Not only does it prepare children’s fingertips to be more sensitive, it also teaches respect for the materials and helps to keep them beautiful and clean.<\/p>\n Keep It Fresh: Sensorial Extensions<\/p>\n Blindfolds Increase the Challenge!<\/p>\n Montessori noted that the eye can interfere with what the hand knows. Using a\u00a0blindfold<\/a>\u00a0with the following exercises will isolate the tactile sense.<\/p>\n\n