Sensorial

Sensory materials have been developed to facilitate the formation of ordered thought. For developing minds, sensory input is a mechanism to understand the world around them. Children will often taste, touch, and listen to sounds they create by interacting with their environment. The senses can be categorized by visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, stereognostic- haptic. By deepening the cognitive connections of these senses, children develop the capacity for deeper concentration and abstract thought.

Visual Sense

The visual sense materials are well known in the Montessori classroom with the Pink Tower, Brown Stair, and many others designed to help students differentiate objects based on their appearance. These differences, while controlled and understandable, help students explore concepts like size, length, depth, width, gradient, and composition. Embedded within these materials are the abstract ideas critical in many later stages of cognitive development.

Tactile

Students in all stages of development use their sense of touch to help understand concepts like hot/warm/cool, rough and smooth textures, soft and hard, and in the case of hearing impaired, reading and writing. The materials that have been developed to increase this sense of awareness rely on comparisons between these characteristics, allowing students to come to their own conclusions and understanding. Strengthening their connections to this sense, allows for a great deal of additional exploration in other parts of the classroom.

Auditory

Auditory work is the exploration of sound. Preliminary exercises allow students to compare and contrast sound textures, while more advanced work helps to identify tone and rhythm. Students will often use these materials with kinesthetic action, allowing them to both move and experiment at the same time. The development of this sense, and an acute awareness of auditory information helps give greater meaning to music and movement lessons, nature walks, and classroom instruction.

Olfactory

In the early stages of life, students are often developing sensory skills that will help them create a sense of order and understanding around environmental stimuli. Their sense of taste is quite active during this period, and at times it can be quite difficult to present children with proper nutrition. Allowing students to become active participants in the creation of their meals and tasting experiences opens up new possibilities for more adventurous choices. This area of practical life is vast, from baking activities to peeling and juicing, food exercises are a tasty way to connect children to their food.

Gustatory

In the early stages of life, students are often developing sensory skills that will help them create a sense of order and understanding around environmental stimuli. Their sense of taste is quite active during this period, and at times it can be quite difficult to present children with proper nutrition. Allowing students to become active participants in the creation of their meals and tasting experiences opens up new possibilities for more adventurous choices. This area of Sensorial work differentiates from Practical Life because of the focus on the sense of taste versus the process of making food, however often these lessons go hand in hand.

Stereognostic/Haptic

Stereognostic perception, also known as haptic feedback, is the ability to perceive the form of an object in the absence of visual and auditory information. While this often relies on the tactile nature of the object, it also requires the student to contruct form in their own mind using abstraction, essentially building it through touch translation. Think of it like computer modeling in the human mind. While that sounds rather complicated, activities like the mystery bag, geometric solids, and using a blindfold are fun ways to extend previous sensorial learning, and deepen a student’s understanding of shape and form.