CLE4133

An Introduction to
Montessori Pedagogy

Week 4
Topic:
Sensorial Education
 Learning
Outcomes
Discuss the importance of
sensorial education/education
of the senses.
List the objectives of
different apparatus to refine
different kind of senses.
Work with and present the
apparatus to refine different
kind of senses.
 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education: Education?
 Tiny fingers seek out objects to grasp, lingering on
irresistible textures, squeezing and prodding to find out
more. Wide eyes gaze at faces, movement, color and
sparkle. Tantalizing objects find their way into little
mouths. Little heads turn whether a captivating sound
is familiar or not, and the special smell of mum or dad
heightens the comfort of snuggling close.

© LMS SEGi education group

 WHAT ARE OUR SENSES?

There was nothing in the intellect which does not first exist in the
senses (Aristotle, cited in Hainstock, 1997 ).

Eyes • sense of sight (visual)

Ears • sense of hearing (auditory)

Nose • sense of smell (olfactory)

Tongue • sense of taste (gustatory)

Hands • sense of touch (tactile)

 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education Education?
 SENSORIAL
IMPRESSIONS
Bombardments of impressions
on the mind such as:
images, colors, shapes
smells, odors, fragrances
textures, weight, temperature
tastes
sounds, noises, music
 SENSORIAL IMPRESSIONS

on
Confusi ss
i s o rd e r line
D
u d d l e d Up
M
e s N o Sense
Ma k

When the impressions are not enough:

the mind needs to be trained to discriminate
and appreciate
This will help the child to attain maximum refinement
of his senses and help him build a deeper knowledge
and understanding of the world
 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education Education?
 Sensorial Education:
What are the exercises of
the senses?
In Montessori terms, the senses are
the ‘points of contact’ through
which young children absorb from
the environment the impressions
they use to construct the fabric of
the mind and the intellect.
In Montessori curriculum, the
exercises of the senses show
children:
how to attend to specific
sensory impressions
how to organize them
talk about them
retrieve them in an orderly
way.
 Sensorial Education:
What are the exercises
of the senses?

• The Montessori exercises of

the senses are based on sets
of graded objects with
design specifications as
precise as those of scientific
instruments.
• Each set of objects
materializes, isolates and
grades one quality.
• The qualities include texture,
colour, volume, mass, length,
taste, temperature, shape,
sound and smell.
Sensorial Education: What are the
exercises of the senses?
• These sets of graded objects help children to:

1. bring sensory impressions to

consciousness

2. perceive finer and

finer distinctions

3. classify numerous sensory impressions

according to a limited set of abstract categories.
 Sensorial Education:
What are the exercises of the senses?
• Exercises with sensorial materials are matched to the
following sensitive periods:
From about the age of three children like to focus
their attention on one sensory quality at a time:
• first perhaps texture, next maybe colour, later size.

After the age of four children become interested in

refining their perception.
• They focus their attention in order to be able to discriminate
between increasingly fine variations, for example, between two
slightly different shades of blue or two notes a semitone apart.
Touch Board

1 2 3
 Sensorial Education

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0jPh6yDqQc&t=197s
 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education Education?
 Exploration of the
Why Sensorial Education? world with
deeper knowledge
and understanding

develop further and refine the senses

see things in greater details
acquire new and deeper kind of knowledge
stimulate and refine powers of observation

compare, contrast, discriminate and distinguish

different sense impressions and put them in some sort
of order

put order and system in the environment

 Why Sensorial Education?
Provide the key to guide children the
exploration of the universe
Our apparatus for educating the senses
offers the child a key to guide his
exploration of the world, they cast a light
upon it which makes visible to him more
things in detail than he could see in the
dark, or uneducated state
(Montessori, cited in Hainstock, 1997)
WHY SENSORIAL EDUCATION?

Train and promote intellectual development- help to develop later abstract

thinking

Montessori, Discovery of the Child, Chapter 9:

The training and sharpening of the senses has the obvious advantage of enlarging the
field of perception and of offering an ever more solid foundation for intellectual
growth. The intellect builds up its store of practical ideas through contact with , and
exploration of, its environment. Without such concepts the intellect would lack
precision and inspiration in its abstract operations.
 Sensorial Education:
Abstraction and imagination
• Through sensorial education children learn about abstraction and
develop their imagination skills.

Abstraction is the process of extracting from concrete reality an

essence, or an idea, that then can become a resource for thinking.

Imagination is the ability to think of things not immediately

present to the senses.

A child’s catalogue of sensory qualities, abstracted from reality, is

the source of the child’s imaginative and creative potential.
• Once children have assembled in their mind an orderly catalogue of
perceptions, varying on the basis of finer and finer distinctions experienced in
the real world, the imagination can select from and re-assemble these
perceptions to create an unlimited number of images, possibilities, and
impossibilities.
 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education Education?
 Sensorial Education:
Education Knowledge
• Sensorial education give
prior knowledge in the form
of concrete learning.
• With these prior knowledge,
they can later use to enter
domains of knowledge in
discipline or subject of such
as Biology, Astronomy,
Mathematics etc. with ease
and enjoyment.
 When To Introduce Sensorial
Education?

between 3-6 years –

conscious absorbent
mind

sensitive period for

refinement of senses
Let us
take a 10
minutes
break!
 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education Education?
The design of the Montessori sensorial
materials
Characteristics Have a direct purpose and an indirect purpose

An aesthetically pleasing appearance

The isolation of a single quality

A control of error
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5RvW3cMy18

A limited quantity of objects in each set

A limited use
 PURPOSES OF
SENSORIAL MATERIALS
• allow the child to experience and concentrate
REFINE on particular qualities in perfect clarity and
isolation
• activities to identify a single perceptual
quality, disclose a range of discrete
ORDER differences in the quality, explore patterns in
those differences
• through exercises that gradually build up
DEVELO from simple to complex perceptual
P challenges
• activities awaken certain sense
BROADEN experiences that were previously
unexplored
 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education Education?
 The stages of a sensorial lesson

the teacher’s the child’s the child’s use

presentation independent of the
(including a work knowledge in
three-period another
language context.
lesson)

• Stage 2 • Stage 3
• Stage 1

(See page 84 in Montessori and Early Childhood A Guide

for Students by Susan Feez (2010) for example steps of a
sensorial lesson using Color Box 1 )
 The three-period
lesson
• Children are given language for the
variable qualities of the sensorial
materials in a ‘three-period’ lesson.
• Each lesson teaches two or three related
words, echoing contrasts in the material.
• The lesson is delivered with a light
touch and the most economical use of
language possible

(Please refer to Additional note for step to step three period

lesson)
 Three-Period Lesson
Teaching steps Language examples
First Period The teacher indicates a quality This is red.
(naming) materialized in an object and gives the This is blue.
child a word for this quality. This is yellow.
The child begins to associate the This is rough.
language (what we say) with the This is smooth.
perception (what we see and touch). This is a triangle.
This is a square.
This is a circle.
Second The teacher names a quality materialized in an object and the Give me the red.
Period child moves to identify the object. The teacher elicits a variety Which one is rough?
(recognition of movements from the child. In this the most extended and Show me the triangle
and varied part of the lesson, the child and the teacher collaborate, Where is the red one?
associate) the child recognizing the object with the quality that Can you find the rough one?
corresponds to the language provided by the teacher. Put the triangle back in its frame.

Third Period The teacher slips into the third period, What’s this again?
(recall) without the child noticing, by casually Do you remember
asking questions. The responsibility for what this is?
identifying the quality, using both Can you tell me
movement and language, is handed over to the child, and the what this is?
teacher is able to verify the child has learned the names.
Three-Period Lesson

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VQ0nQxhfAs
 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education Education?
 Types of sense exercises
• There are between 20 and 30 sets of Montessori sensorial
materials and, for each set, there is a progression of exercises.
• The exercises train the following senses:

visual
tactile
taste and smell
baric and thermic
stereognostic
auditory
 Activities to refine visual sense

Knobbed cylinders
https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=DDWAgd7BWt0

Pink tower
https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=E3xVA1adcHU
 Long rods/red
rods
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=O027bPQ0ySc

Brown stair
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=CBZKSoTDb9Q

Knobless
cylinder
https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=mrOM6FA
Tatc
KNOBBED CYLINDERS

• Refine child’s visual perception of dimension

• Refine child’s co-ordination of movement
• Provide controlled experiences of seriation
• Encourage child’s basic mathematical vocabulary
• Indirect preparation for reading and writing

PINK TOWER, BROAD STAIR, LONG RODS, KNOBLESS

CYLINDERS
Refine the child’s visual and muscular perception
Refine
of dimension
Develop the child’s co-ordination of movement and
Develop
fine motor control
Prepare the child, indirectly, for mathematics by
Prepare giving experiences in comparison, grading and
seriation

Teach Teach the child basic mathematical vocabulary

 Activities to refine chromatic sense
Color box 1
https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=rFibQyVimh
8

Color box 2
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=gyIb6-c4ql0

Color box 3
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=mo19AcxYUK4
 Activities to refine chromatic sense

• Further the child’s experience in

Further
matching
• Refine the child’s visual perception of
Refine
color and fine motor skills
Extend • Extend the child’s vocabulary
• Teach the child names of colors, if the
Teach
child does not already know them
 Activities to refine stereognostic sense
Stereognostic: the ability to determine the shape and weight of an object
by touching or lifting it.

Geometric Pairing Sorting Mystery

solids small objects beg
https://www.yo
solids https://www.yout https://www.yout
utube.com/wat https://www.you ube.com/watch? ube.com/watch?
ch?v=wBXVeL tube.com/watch? v=d-d5ZXzod3A v=WpTXwctIX
Nc2dc v=NLk_ahueQl Ds
U
 Activities to refine stereognostic sense
Geometric solids
exploration of solids
grouping the solids
matching solids to basic
teaching names of solids

Pairing/sorting small solids

two bags containing 4-5 pairs of small geometric solids, animals,
vehicles, etc
basket/container with compartments containing collection of 4-5
sets of shells, spices, buttons, etc
a bag containing a variety of everyday objects (mystery bag)
 Activities to refine kinaesthetic sense
Kinaesthetic: muscle sense the sensation by which bodily position,
weight, muscle tension, and movement are perceived.

Demonstration tray
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0KbAkG9QRY

Geometric cabinet – individual drawers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ICTngiqV3g

Geometric cabinet – drawers and cards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY-bSpPXwnA

Botany cabinet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SefLzjq3dTM
 Activities to promote mathematical
awareness
Constructive triangles
Box 1 : triangular
Box 2 : small hexagonal
Box 3 : large hexagonal
Box 4: rectangular ((coloured
triangles)
Box 5: rectangular (blue triangles)
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=5Q66Yu0pBvA

Tessellations
-Making repetitive patterns
using different shapes
https://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=DMxgjas0ykk

Fractions
Sensorial exercise – puzzle
Fraction cones
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=i-yD9a8LIT8
Activities to promote mathematical awareness

Binomial cube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=1GX8Wnufe9M

Trinomial cube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=XsttsazuFwo
Activities to promote
mathematical awareness

Binomial cube & Trinomial

cube:
To provide the child with
an experience of the way in
which the cube can be
divided and sub-divided
 To lay the foundation for
the later study of algebra
 To build a cube sensorially
as a puzzle, matching
shapes and colours
 Activities to refine tactile sense
Tactile – sense of touch

Touch tablets
Touch boards

Touch fabrics
https://www.youtube.co
https://www.youtube.co m/watch?v=gz1gT4ziN
m/watch?v=vL8wzdQa ME
W0U

https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=fYz1MwfE
FNQ
 Activities to refine tactile sense

Touch boards/Touch pairing tablets/ Touch fabrics

• Stimulate the child’s interest in texture in the

Stimulate environment by providing sensory experiences

Develop • Develop vocabulary

• Prepare the child for use of sandpaper in other

Prepare activities (sandpaper letters, numerals, globe)
• Refine the child’s control and coordination,
Refine while preparing the child for writing

Develop • Develop lightness of touch

 Activities to refine thermic sense

Thermic : associated with heat

Thermic tablets Thermic bottles Introduction of

mathematics

https://www.youtub https://www.youtube.c
e.com/watch?v=LQ om/watch?v=m5jZW4
exEgSV-GY _xhnE

To refine the child’s awareness of the different

temperature ‘feel’ of materials in the environment
Last Updated:January 23, 2024 48

caused by the different thermal conductivity of the

materials
 Activities to refine
baric sense

Baric tablets
To refine the child’s
ability to differentiate
small differences in
weight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
6CKu4ANu74Y
 Sound boxes
• To refine the child’s listening skills
Activities to auditory sense and auditory memory
refine auditory Montessori bells
• To provide matching and grading
sense exercises in pitch in order to refine the
sense of pitch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
DXkYFzJ1S0E 52X6XH0yjRE
 Activities to refine olfactory sense

Smell jars
To refine the sense of
smell
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=XJPHINDc5Nc

Activities to refine gustatory sense

Taste jars
 To refine the sense of taste

https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=l-LoB1jdHGw
 Summary of Today Lesson

What Are Our Sensorial The stages of a

Senses? Materials sensorial lesson

Sensorial
Sensorial Education: Types of sense
Impressions Education exercises
Knowledge

Sensorial Why Sensorial

Education Education?
Source:

Isaacs, B. (2015). Bringing the Montessori approach

to your early years practice. Routledge.

Feez, S. (2010). Montessori and early childhood:

a guide for students. Sage Publications