Sensorial
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Maria Montessori designed the sensory materials to offer young children concrete experience in classifying and comparing their environment. She insisted on the need to educate the functioning of the hand. The materials in the sensorial area are designed to help children sharpen their senses by isolating particular qualities such as colour, size, flavour, smell, pitch, texture and weight.
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Children absorb content from their environments. This occurs through contact with their surroundings and with the use of their senses, smell, taste, visual, auditory and kinaesthetic or muscular sense.
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Dr Montessori claimed to be the first to discover the “sensitive periods of infancy and to make use of them for education”. Through the senses the child is able to orientate himself/herself with the outer environment. Dr Montessori maintained that there is a sensitive period for the refinement of the senses.
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On the Sensorial shelves there will be specially designed materials to encourage development of the senses, such as pink tower; sets of cylinders graduated in size; fabrics to sort by touch.
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Some materials; like the cylinders of the geometric insets which are held by their little knobs between finger and thumb prepare the muscles of the hand for writing, others prepare the ear for hearing fine differences in sound (to prepare for, among other things, distinguishing between letter sounds). The child is exposed to the specific language for the new experience, attributes and skills he/she has acquired and therefore their vocabulary is enhanced.
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