Montessori Prepared Environment And Subjects-Part 2

Sensorial: Building Imagination with the Real

A child interacts with the physical world through her senses. From birth, she will look, listen, touch, taste, pick up, manipulate, and smell almost anything. At first, everything goes into the mouth, but gradually the child begins to explore each object’s weight, texture, and temperature.

The sensorial curriculum is designed to help the child focus her attention more carefully on the physical world, exploring with each of her senses the subtle variations in the properties of objects. Through sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell, the sensorial materials “throw a spotlight” on reality. For example, the concepts of length and shortness are derived from the red rods of varying lengths. Language is clarified and vocabulary is sharpened. Because these rods are rendered in unit lengths from one to ten, they also provide a basis for mathematical gradation.

Roughness and smoothness are experienced by touching rough sandpaper and smooth

polished wood. Later, these lessons are repeated with the sandpaper globe, helping the

child to distinguish between land (sandpaper) and water (smoothness). Sensorial materials are used for clarification of large, small, heavy, thick, think, loud, soft, high, low, hot, cold, colors, tastes, smells, and for plane and solid geometric forms. Typical sensorial materials include: the pink tower, the broad stair, the red rods, the knobbed cylinders, the knobless cylinders, the Baric tablets, the smelling bottles, the geometry cabinet, the geometric solids, and binomial and trinomial cubes. The sensorial material is really a key to the world and is the basis for abstraction.

“Imagination can have only a sensorial basis.

The sensory education which prepares for accurate perception of all different details

in the quality of things is the foundation of all observation.

This helps us to collect from the external world the material world for the imagination.”

~ Maria Montessori

Mathematics: Materializing the Abstract

The Montessori approach to math is special for many reasons. All operations emerge from the concrete manipulation of “materialized abstractions” such as rods, beads, spindles, cubes, cards, counters, etc. The children do not merely learn to count, they are also able to visualize the whole structure of our numeration system and to perform the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with an overview in mind.

Children are also presented with the possibilities of fact memorization at a young age where combinations like 3 + 2 = offer a real fascination, at age four. If this sensitive period is missed, rote drill will be necessary later on. Materials are sequenced so that conditions for mathematical discovery will always occur.

Problem solving and formulae once contributed by the teacher’s directive are materialized in groups of objects which lead to independent learning. Children retain better, any information that they “figure out” on their own. Montessori math is based on the European tradition of “unified Math”, which has only recently been recognized by North American educators. The fundamentals of algebra, geometry, logic and statistics, along with the principles of arithmetic are introduced very early.

This study continues over the years, becoming increasingly complex and abstract. The calculations of area and volume, for example, involve algebra, geometry and arithmetic. Since these areas have never been arbitrarily separated, children are better able to analytically understand the process involved. Elementary Montessori students are continuously given the opportunity to apply mathematical concepts in various projects and activities. Early math activities involve use of the following materials: red and blue rods, spindle boxes, number cards and counters, and golden beads.

Reading and Writing: Pathways to Culture

Reading and writing are the keys which can uncover, conserve, and synthesize knowledge.
The preschool children are immersed in the dynamics of their own language development.
Using simple alphabet cut-outs and sandpaper letters, young children are able to effortlessly link sounds, symbols, their shapes, and their written formation.

As the children improve their reading of words, they want to know more names of things. The classroom is filled with pictures, labels, puzzles bearing the names of animals, plants, geometric figures, countries, and land forms for example. From the very beginning, reading and writing are tied to culture. The mastery of skills is propelled by interest and love of the environment. By placing young children in classes where older students are already reading, there is a natural lure to “do what the big kids are doing”.

Children learn by touching and manipulating sandpaper letters, by using a movable alphabet to reinforce phonetic sounds with graphic symbols, and by combining letters to form words with metal inserts. Children are first taught the functions of grammar and sentence structure as young as five or six years, just as they are first learning to put words together to express themselves. Doing so this early develops an innate ability for the child to express himself well and correctly in written form. Montessori created a set of symbols to represent each part of speech. These symbols enable children to label sentences easily and at an age where it is fun, rather than a chore to do so.

The teacher's task is no small or easy one! He has to prepare a huge amount of knowledge to satisfy the child's mental hunger, and he is not, like the ordinary teacher, limited by a syllabus.
~ Maria Montessori

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