Have you noticed the Sensorial pictures throughout the hallway? This month’s theme is all about the senses!
With Sensorial exploration, children are presented with a wide variety of rich experiences which require them to use all of their five senses. These experiences develop and foster cognitive skills in a multitude of ways. With opportunities to work on skills such as classification, serration, differentiation, and rhythm, children are able to concentrate on the refinement of their senses and make classifications in their environment.
Sensorial comes from the words sense or senses. As there are no new experiences for the child to take from the Sensorial work, the child is able to concentrate on the refinement of all his senses, from visual to stereognostic. The purpose and aim of Sensorial work is for the child to acquire clear, conscious, information and to be able to then make classifications in his environment. Montessori believed that sensorial experiences began at birth. Through his senses, the child studies his environment. Through this study, the child then begins to understand his environment. The child, to Montessori, is a “sensorial explorer”. Through work with the sensorial materials, the child is given the keys to classifying the things around him, which leads to the child making his own experiences in his environment. Through the classification, the child is also offered the first steps in organizing his intelligence, which then leads to his adapting to his environment. Sensorial Exercises were designed by Montessori to cover every quality that can be perceived by the senses such as size, shape, composition, texture, loudness or softness, matching, weight, temperature, etc. Because the exercises cover such a wide range of senses, Montessori categorized the exercises into eight different groups: Visual, Tactile, Baric, Thermic, Auditory, Olfactory, Gustatory, and Stereognostic.
If your child was featured last month, let us know if you would like to take home that memory!
