Sensorial 3-6 Casa

“The training and sharpening of the senses has the obvious advantage of enlarging the field of perception and of offering an ever more solid foundation for intellectual growth. The intellect builds up its store of practical ideas through contact with, and exploration of, its environment. Without such concepts the intellect would lack precision and inspiration in its abstract operations…. Nevertheless, if they can be trained and refined, even if this is only a temporary achievement in the lives of many, this will be of great value since it is at this period of development that basic ideas are conceived and intellectual habits are formed.” (Discovery of the Child p. 101)

Maria Montessori got the idea for her sensorial activities from French doctors Itard and Seguin, which originally had been designed for children with disabilities. Maria adapted these materials to be for all children, then later with her son Mario they designed their own materials. There was a great deal of observation that took place when designing their own materials. How the children used the materials, the interactions the materials provoked, the amount of time spent with the materials and the development that evolved from working with the materials were all taken into consideration for the decision process of which materials were truly the most valuable. Each of the materials went through these considerations and were eliminated if the needs weren’t met. Montessori paid a great deal of attention to the materials dimensions, shapes, and weights. At the end, the only materials that were kept were the ones that the children paid the most attention to and benefited them the most developmentally.

One’s senses are very important as they relay us constant information about the world around us. Our senses connect us to the external world and are our gateways to understanding our environment. The senses that help us perceive the world include visual/seeing (colours and their intensities, shape, light, movement, depths and dimension), tactile/touch(heat/cold, pain, rough/smooth and weight), auditory/hearing (noise/silence, music, language, intensity, listening), olfactory/smell(good/bad, danger such as fire, gas, bad food, emotional connection), gustatory/taste(good/bad, salty, sweet, bitter, sour, umami). When perceiving one of these sense, they leave a trace behind in our mind and we understand the world around us through our senses. Our senses are often taken for granted and we don’t notice their importance until one of them is gone as they are the bridge between our external environment and our mind (mental). Maria Montessori designed materials for all the senses, including the stereognostic sense (perception). Through our senses, the absorbent mind takes in totality, everything around us from multiple angles.

The sensorial activities respond to many sensitive periods including language and order as well as certain human tendencies, such as activity, order, repetition, movement, and exactness. Children who enter the Casa have already had plenty of sensorial experiences, however the activities in the Casa aim to help the child to arrange and organize the sensorial impressions they receive as well as classifying the impressions received. It is natural for us to classify and organize as it is our way of making sense of the world. Through the sensorial activities, the child also works on refining their senses by distinguishing and differentiating at small levels which helps bring awareness to the world. Working with these activities also helps the child with the ability to form abstractions. This allows the child to understand and make sense of concepts which aren’t random or vague. Through concrete and hands on experience the child can form clear abstractions to the point at which they no longer need the concreteness right in front of them. “However, when I gave the children this scientific material, they preferred it to toys, because it responds to an urge in their nature; it enables them to develop. We call it a material for the development of the senses, but sense development is merely the consequence of the urge to do something with the hands. The children also gain the ability to control their movements with precision, and this skill brings them closer to maturity.” (The 1946 London Lectures p. 16)

With the sensorial material we only give the children a key; a key to the world so we only offer what is necessary and they explore further on their own. It can be described as giving the child the point of departure but not their arrival, that they come to on their own. We should limit what we offer and allow the child to make their own further discoveries as only then will the material fully benefit the child. Through the sensorial activities and carful observation, one can also discover if there are any possible developmental delays or other issues that may need to be addressed such as colour blindness or loss of smell. This can often times be observed through choice of activities in the sensorial area.

Common features of the sensorial activities include the materials being beautiful, attractive, and inviting just as the in the practical life area and many are made of natural materials such as wood. The materials in this area are also very scientifically designed and quite precise. All the materials went through an initial experiment with proportions and dimensions and the differences in weight, size and measurements are all very significant in the sensorial area. They also help materialize abstraction such as the red rods, which give the child hands on experience with abstraction of length. Some of the materials also isolate a specific quality such as the red rods, which isolate only the quality of length. There is also only one of each of the materials which avoids distractions as the child isn’t looking at what someone else is doing with the materials and there is simply enough for the experience and no more. The amount of each material and where they are places has a specific order as with the practical life materials and each material has a specific number in each set, which is often ten. The children are also prepared indirectly for language through vocabulary and math with numbers one to ten. Once a child has had plenty of experience with the material, language is introduced through a three-period lesson introducing concepts such as long and short or parallelogram and right-angled scalene triangle. Through the extensions of the materials such as the exercises and games, the child is given further challenges as well as more experience and comprehension and develops their memory, social skills, abstract thinking as well as self-confidence and awareness of the knowledge they already know. The activities in the sensorial area also help prepare the child for later activities and experiences in the Casa as well as outside.

Within the sensorial activities many of them fall into the categories of either pairing or grading. Pairing comes first as it doesn’t require as refined of a sense and the child is finding two similarities versus slight and almost unnoticeable differences. Pairing can be split into visual and non-visual paring, where one is blindfolded (non-visual) one is isolating the specific sense and therefor more difficult as we are relying solely on one sense to give us feedback. Grading can be split into visual and non-visual grading just as with pairing, where the process is the same of going from one extreme to the other, however it is a much greater challenge to do a non-visual grading.

The sensorial activities help the child discover and learn themselves through their own experiences and when a sense is isolated, it brings clarity and allows the child to focus and concentrate on one thing at a time. “Psychological studies have shown that it is necessary to isolate the senses as far as possible if some single quality is to be brought out. The sense of touch is more acute if it is directed toward an object that does not conduct heat, that is, at one that gives at the same time a feeling of heat or cold, and if the subject is paced in a dark, silent room where there are no sights or sounds to distract the impressions received from the sense of touch. There can thus be a twofold kind of isolation, one in the subject, who is isolated from every other impression that might come from the surroundings, and the other in the material, which is systematically graded to a single quality.” (Discovery of the Child p.104) In the sensorial materials, the control of error is quite unique as it helps the child see if they are going off the track themselves and gives them the opportunity to self-correct. For example, when building the pink tower, if no put together correctly, a visual disharmony appears from the visual sense. This also supports the child’s self-esteem as they are not feeling pressured to get it right the first time as well as supporting the child by giving them the means to discover their own problem-solving skills. These are skills that the child will be able to use for the rest of their lives when reaching a problem or dealing with difficulties. The child also has the opportunity to repeat continuously which allows the child to become deeply involved with the materials themselves. A child’s development is a process and not immediate. Often times the developmental process of the child is very subtly but can be quite obvious as well so frequent observations are important.