Visual Sense: Dimension

Brown Stair
Materials Ten wooden, brown prisms which all have the same
width, 20 cm, but different in breadth and height,
increasing in size progressively in the algebraic series
of the second power.

1 cm2 = 1 square centimeter

2 cm2 = 4 square centimeters
3 cm2 = 9 square centimeters
4 cm2 = 16 square centimeters
5 cm2 = 25 square centimeters
6 cm2 = 36 square centimeters
7 cm2 = 49 square centimeters
8 cm2 = 64 square centimeters
9 cm2 = 81 square centimeters
10 cm2 = 100 square centimeters

A rug
A place on the shelf where the stairs can be viewed
from 2 dimensions: the side and the front

Purposes Visual discrimination of dimension

Indirect muscular education of grip
Indirect preparation for mathematics

Age 3 – 3.5

Presentation 1. Invite child to activity.

2. Retrieve rug with child, asking child to choose
lesson place, making sure it has ample room
surrounding it.
3. Go to brown stair shelf and name activity.
4. Take smallest stair between thumb and forefinger,
steadying with other hand.
5. Walk smallest stair to rug and place on right side.
6. Invite child to move next smallest stair from shelf to
rug and place on right side of rug.
7. Deconstruct brown stair from shelf, transferring
pieces to right side of rug in this pattern with child.
Note: When handling stairs of considerable size,
model a two-handed grip on either end of stair being
carried.
 Visual Sense: Dimension
Brown Stair

8. Time to reassemble brown stair: start by setting

largest stair in top right corner, horizontally-
oriented.
9. Continue with next-largest stair, until all stairs are
assembled.
10. Fade once child has the pattern down, and invite
child to keep building the stairs.
11. Return when cycle of activity is complete.
12. Clean up by repeating steps 8-9 back onto the shelf
where brown stair originally sat.

Control of Error Visual disharmony

Following Exercises 1. Invite child to build the brown stair. Take the
thinnest prism to show the unit of measure. Model
once or twice and let the child finish. The thinnest
prism makes the height equivalent.
2. Invite the child to work with the Pink Tower and the
Brown Stairs together.

Language Thick – Thin (cylinder block 1): Comparatives,

Superlatives
Sensorial Games 1,2,4

Pedagogical Notes  Size and weight cannot be materially separated. The

weight gives an extra element to distinguish the
difference in the dimension.
 The impression of breadth gained when using the
monkey grip to handle the prisms helps the child to
distinguish the differences in dimension.
 Dr. Montessori states that: “..it is above all the eye
that acts in recognizing gradation and therefore in
revealing chance errors. …a staircase which looks as
 Visual Sense: Dimension
Brown Stair

if it had irregular steps, …all strike the eye… and

this striking whole calls upon the eye to recognize
the error and the hand to remedy it by
rearrangement.” The Discovery of the Child, pp.
174-5. Kalakshetra Publications, 1958