Sensorial Education
“Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.”
—MARIA MONTESSORI
The Sensorial Curriculum
These are exercises in perception, observation, fine discrimination, and classification that play a major role in helping our children to develop their sense of logic and concentration. They begin at age three and lay the foundation for later work in science, geography, sociology, music, art and other areas where skills in observation, sorting, patterning and classification are important.
Sensorial Education( Ages 3 to 12)
- Discrimination of length, width, and height
- Discrimination of volume
- Discrimination in multiple dimensions
- Discrimination among color tones
- Discrimination among geometric shapes for shape and relative size
- Discrimination among solid geometric shapes by sight and touch
- Solving of complex abstract puzzles in three dimensions
- Discrimination of intensity and nature of sounds
- Discrimination among musical tones
- Discrimination of texture by touch
- Discrimination of weight by touch
- Discrimination of temperature by touch
- Discrimination of scents
Which, in the older students, lead to such exercises as:
- Precise observation of the natural world
- Culinary discrimination