Sensorial

The fundamental aim of a Sensorial education is to teach a child about his/her environment and development of the senses is a necessary foundation upon which a higher intellect may be built.

As a child ages from three to seven, he begins to develop/recognize the five basic senses : Touch, Taste, Smell, Visual, and Sound. The environment around an individual is essentially a collection of materials to make the five senses more active.
Basic Sensorial lessons aim to exercise a child's sensory functions via observation and logical reasoning. A progression of these lessons, leads to a gradual acquaintance between the child and his/her environment in a rational manner, resulting in the child's ability to process information through all his five senses.

Dr. Montessori believed that the natural mental development of a child, consisted of several sensitive periods, or in other words a special sensibility or disposition towards a particular trait, eg. for sensitive period for Language, Order, refinement of the Senses, etc. Before the age of reason sets in, children tend to display a special interest in Sensorial impressions like color, sound, shape, texture, etc.

Sensorial materials are organized according to the perceptual system they serve, (Visual, Taste, Smell etc), in order to help the child's mind focus on one particular quality. For example, such as length, size, shape, or color for Visual perception. Through these materials, the child is allowed to explore, discriminate, repeat and refine many Sensorial experiences. The isolation of a sense or senses in particular allow the child to work with varying difficulties in skill and provide an opportunity for self learning. The materials are constructed with the concept of control of error built into them. This helps a child self-identify his/her mistakes, and to learn from them, via repetition. They should be designed to be easy, pleasing to the eye, short in time, and arouse curiosity in the child's intellect. Another goal of the materials is to help a child understand abstract things. For example, a material that is designed to help a child understand the concept of weight or length (heavy vs light, or longer vs shorter) will later help develop the concept of addition or subtraction for Math. Materials that give a child new impressions of size, shape or color, bring order in a child's mind, and teaches him/her about classification and comparison. Work starting from left to right, or, new shapes helps develop the impression of Language, or alphabets.

The control of error built into the materials, makes the teacher's role, a passive one, allowing the child to explore the complexities of the work, The child's own intelligence is applied at observing, comparing, reasoning, and forming judgments about the correctness of his result. The repetition of this exercise of attention and intelligence leads to real development in a child's mind.

The child before the age of reasons sets in, has a special interest in Sensorial images of all kinds – in color, sound, shape, texture, and so forth. For example, the children who have worked with color tablets develop a discrimination in delicate shades of color. He is able to match different colors. Sensorial materials like touch tablets helps the child in learning the shapes of the letters of the alphabet and different geometric forms. There are amongst the sensory materials as the cylinders,pink tower, etc. - which, being carefully and scientifically graded, give accurate impressions of the dimensions of things. Children develop a sensibility on comparing the dimensions of things by sight.

Through exercises within a carefully designed environment and discreetly aided by the adult, the child successfully becomes who she is through her own self – creation. Vital to many sense experience, the human hand is unique among all the animals. It is through exercises with the hand that human intelligence develops. Within this higher intellect, humanity lives more productively and actively within the environment. The environment designed to educate the senses not only permitted observation of the child for the wonder of her development, it gave opportunity to “discover and correct positive defects which would otherwise pass unnoticed or would only become apparent after they had become so serious that it would no longer be possible for a child to adapt to his surroundings because of deafness or poor sight ”(Montessori,1967,p144.)

The sensorial materials offers an isolation of the senses of a child focusing on a particular thing, it involves difficulty of skill and provide opportunity for self learning. These materials helps in learning by doing the exercises again and again, resulting in love for freedom and independence. Due to the concept of have a control of error within the material allows the child to learn by it's mistakes which he can recognize easily. Children love sensorial materials because they are short, easy and pleasing to their eye, that arouse curiosity in the child's intellect.

The main purpose of the sensorial materials is to help a child to make abstract things look more accurate. Each material is designed with the purpose to help a child's mind to focus on some particular idea of quantity, size and weight, for example – longer or shorter, heavy or light, less or more, which later develops the idea of addition and subtraction for Math. Sensorial materials tells a child the new impressions of size, shape, color that brings order in the child, helps him to classify and compare them. These activities are the primary stage of learning Language. Work starting from left to right helps him to develop the impression of writing from left to right.The sensorial materials serves to educate the eye of a child to distinguish difference in dimension, from larger scale to the smaller.

The educative process is based on the fact that the materials consists of the control of error in them, helping child to find the concrete evidence in the work. It helps them to correct the mistakes by themselves. So, the teacher plays a passive role and it is a complex work of the child's own intelligence which leads to process of an auto-education. The child learns to observe; to make comparisons, to form judgments, to reason and to decide; and it is this indefinite repetition of this exercise of attention and of intelligence that a real development takes place. For example, a child of 3 years old starts working with the pink tower and brown stairs, takes some time to differentiate between 2 different sizes of cubes or blocks.

The sensorial materials, educates the child to perform fine and delicate movements and his mind is afforded special training in attention.

The different series of experiments and attempts of working, on the sensorial materials, and to put them in right order, leads a child to end the work in happiness. In this way a child educates his eye to the recognition of forms. Sensorial materials aims at teaching various names of the forms, size, colors, texture, weight and so forth; children want to know all the names, and take pleasure in learning the most difficult word, this is a stage when a foundation of language is formed and where the sounds of foreign language is learned.

The main purpose of the sensorial materials is to educate senses through the process of 'recognition/perception of identities' (the pairing of similar objects or insertion of a solid form in a space that fits it), 'recognition/perception of contrasts or differences' (presentation of extremes with in a series of objects) and 'sequential quantity' (discrimination of objects very similar to one another - gradation of series). Therefore, sensorial materials are organized according to the perceptual system, from simple to complex, concrete to abstract, top to bottom, left to right, sequenced by sense involved: visual, muscular-tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and closer to the Math area.

The fundamental guide to give sensorial lessons is the method of observation, in which is included and understood the liberty of the child. The teacher shall observe whether the child interests himself in the object, how he is interested in it, for how long, etc., even noticing the expression of his face. Teacher must not explain the lesson by insisting on repeating it and must not make the child feel that he has made a mistake.

The three period’s lessons provide a child with a precise vocabulary for what s/he has taken in, as the directress gives explanations or extraneous words. The establishment of vocabulary for sense impressions makes possible communication between oneself and others, regarding common human experience. It consist of Association, Recognition and Recall- First Period : Association gives a name to a sense-perception. The name is spoken distinctively –“This is red.” “This is yellow.” Second Period : Recognition allows the child to point to the object, sound, or word, given a verbal clue-“ Show me the yellow.” “Show me the red.” If a child is showing difficulty here in identifying the objects with verbal clues, the child is NOT ready to continue and remain in the Second Period phase with the child. Third Period: With Recall, one asks the child to remember the words associated with the concept without verbal cues: “What is this ?”(the last concept named in the Second Period, only if the Third Period is done directly after the Second Period.)“What is this ?” 

Materials can be used in different ways : use of a material in a different arrangement, use of 2 or more locations (close together), involvement of additional children. Adding a element to basic material: learning of related language (three period lesson), use of a blindfold, recognition of removal of material ( for example: removal game with solids), recognition of the quality within the environment (for example: a door is a rectangle),combination of 2 different materials (for example: materials of size), creation of sets from the environment (for example: putting all the spheres on a rug) and creation of a written record (for example: making a booklet of color names in color).

The basic benefits of variations and extensions:

mental imaging -

activities involving the child's memory of an object or impression not present ( e.g. a “what's missing?” game with geometric solids; use of two locations to do a matching task) require the child to hold a mental image of the object or the impression. This helps to develop the child's memory, generalization - as the child associates a specific material (example, a red color tablet) with some other object in the environment, he or she begins to generalize the related concept (the color red) to other experiences, 

creativity -

the child's creativity is called into play through creation of new possibilities with the materials. 'Creativity means finding new ways to work within a definite structure' (Waltuch, 1986, pg. 17),

conceptualization - when the child records or encodes her work, in whatever form, she creates a visual map of her impressions. This translation of concrete object into graphic record can be seen as a step towards abstraction,

attention span - many such activities involve extended concentration on the part of the child. For example, Charlie, 2 ½ years old boy, started working with cylinder blocks 1, trying to figure out the appropriate hole for the cylinders, takes him 20-25 mins. Sitting independently working on it with full concentration.

The environment, materials, and processes are linked to the child through the teacher. Montessori considered the teacher and her methods extremely important for the child's development. She is like a guiding light of the child . She observes children, create an appropriate environment for them, help them to make their own decisions. The teacher suggests activities to the children who are still wandering or disorderly, once the child's interest has been aroused, the teacher steps back, as to help to develop his concentration.

The child, although cannot share in the work of adults, he has it's own difficult and important task to perform, to be a responsible and an independent member of the community he lives in. A child gains experience through exercise and movement, he co-ordinates his own movements and records the emotions he experiences in coming into contact with the external world. The child laboriously learns how to speak by listening attentively and making those initial efforts which are possible for him alone, and the tireless efforts he succeeds in learning how to stand erect and run about. By means of his constant efforts, sorrows, experiences and conquests of difficult trials and struggles, a child slowly perfects his activities. An adult assist in shaping the environment, but the child perfects his own being.

References :

• The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori.
• Dr. Montessori’s Own handbook illustrated – Maria Montessori.
• Maria Montessori – Her Life and Work by E. M. Standing.
• The Absorbent Mind – Maria Montessori.
• Training Handouts.
• Own classroom observations.