“The senses, being explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge.” — Maria Montessori

In our Acton Program for Families event, Acton parents are led through a series of sensory-based exercises using quintessential Montessori materials.

What do you notice about the Pink Tower? The pieces are cubes; they can ascend (or descend) in size; and, yes, the fact that it is entirely pink is an important observation!

The purpose of the sensorial area in the Montessori studio is not to create sensory perception, but to help the child develop and refine sensory perception. The sensorial materials isolate a particular quality; in the case of the Pink Tower, dimension. By isolating a quality, the child can focus his attention on it, explore it, expand on it, create a classification for it, experiment with how it relates to others of its kind, and, eventually, form an abstraction in his mind so that through his imagination, it is always with him.

Takeaways from working with the Montessori sensorial materials:

1 - Abstraction: The ability to create and hold pictures in the mind. Abstractions come from repeated interactions with concrete objects, until eventually the mind no longer needs the physical object but can go directly to the mental image. If I say the word “mug,” you have a picture in your mind of a mug, and you do not need to hold a mug in your hand to understand what I mean.

2 - Classification: The human tendency to look for patterns and make classifications of objects and behaviors. The child who points to a picture in a book and says “kitty” has already made a classification of cats as separate from dogs. Dogs and cats both have four legs, fur, ears, tails, teeth, whiskers, paws and claws, but the child notices what is different between cats and dogs. It is identifying the difference that aids in her classification.

3 - Language: We help the child focus her attention on the precise language that accompanies a specific sensorial experience. The experience is like the hook, and the language is the hat; without the hook, there is nothing on which to hang the hat.