According to Maria Montessori, sensorial education is the base for intellectual

development. Explain in detail the importance of sensorial education in young

children.

Dr. Montessori believed that human is comprised of body and mind, which she
described as vegetative lives (cardiovascular system or the 'red man'), sensitive lives
(nervous system or the 'white man'), and muscles as parts of the nervous system. The
control of nervous system gives sensitivity and animates. Innumerable filaments from
the brain link all with the psyche (soul/ spirit/mind). The vegetative lives concerns
things related to his physical needs, and the sensitive lives concerns things related to
sense organs that receive impressions from his environment. The vegetative lives serve
the body, the sensitive lives serve the spirit or mind. These two lives are closely
interlocked, and human cannot function without the cooperation of both.

"The actions of the muscles should always be at the service of the mind and should not stoop to
make themselves servants of what is known as the "vegetative" or "physical life" of man." 1)

The nervous system is one, though it has three parts (brain/mind/center, senses, and
muscles). Being a unity, it must be exercised in its totality to become better. Because
of the connection between vegetative and sensitive lives , the action of the muscles, as
a part of nervous system, should always be at the service of the mind, and should not
only function to satisfy the physical life (body).

When a child is born, he has undergone the complete creation of the physics, but not
the psychic. He explores the environment instinctively through sense organs, which
develop first in human. During the first stage of the development called unconscious
mind (0 to 3 years old), a child absorbs impressions unconsciously, responds most to
human stimuli, knowledge is incorporated into the psychic life, constructs his mind,
establishes memory, gains understanding and reasoning skills. Knowledge is being
absorbed and grows slowly as the preparation for the next period, which is the period
of the conscious mind.

During the stage of conscious mind (3 to 6 years old), the absorbent mind is now more
specific. The child starts to have options and choose what they want to learn, child has
a memory & develops a will, and absorbs impressions consciously. Impressions are gained
through intentional interaction with the environment and new experiences integrate
with earlier abilities. This is the period of self-construction, where a child develops his
mental faculties / order through the stimuli and impressions he gets from the
environment. In this period, a child begins to be able to distinguish quantity and quality,
forms and colors, and dimensions. He knows the intensities of colors, distinguishes
tastes from smells, lightness from softness, and sounds from noises. This is the first
act of ordering in his developing mind. The more complex the mapping is, the more able
the child is to identify the relations between the facts and use them for further
learning in mathematics, arts, language, writing, and engineering.

1)
The Discovery Of A Child p. 78
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The mind of a child from birth to age six is absorbing everything in his surroundings.
During this period of the child’s natural development, there are periods that Dr
Montessori called the Sensitive Periods. The term refers to a period of time when a
child’s interests are focused on developing a certain skill. These periods are transitory
and serve the purpose of helping the organism to acquire certain functions, or
determine characteristics. Once this aim is accomplished, the special sensibility dies
away, often to be replaced by another and quite different one. Some of the sensitive
periods are sensitivity for order, language, small objects, learning good manners,
refinement of senses, writing, reading, language, spatial relationships, music, and
mathematics.

Sensitive periods does not only puts the child's mind in relation to certain selected
elements in his environment, but also establishes and perfect a function in his
development, that will stay for the rest of his life.

Humans have a multitude of sensors. Sight (vision, visual sense), hearing (audition,
auditory sense), taste (gustation, gustatory sense), smell (olfaction, olfactory sense),
and touch (somatosensation, somatosensory sense) are the five traditionally recognized
senses. The skin can convey the sensations not only of touch but also of heat and cold,
pressure, and pain. Other senses include thermoception (temperature), proprioception
(kinesthetic sense), equilibrioception (balance), mechanoreception (vibration), position
sense /posture sense (a variety of muscular sense by which the position or attitude of
the body or its parts is perceived), stereognostic sense (the sense by which form
and solidity are perceived), and other stimuli. Handicapped man may lack in certain
senses (like in the blind and deaf), but often times in this case, because of the power
of adaption, one other sense may develop extraordinary well to supply the deficiency of
others.

Montessori sensorial education does not only respond to the child's interests in
sensorial impressions, but also give stimulation to the children to refine the senses,
perfecting their functions. The results of this education shows stunning facts such as
the ability of a child to distinguish delicate shades of colors which may not be able to
be done by adults because the sensitive period has passed. One Montessori game
requires a child to match a shade of a color tablet from a distance only from the
memory of the color. The whole activities done with children's hands enhance focus,
coordination, and muscles that will prepare them for future learning.

Dr. Montessori was well aware-from observation of the tendency of the child's mind to
draw off from material objects their intangible essences, thus building up a store of
abstract ideas. Sensorial education builds the foundation for more accurate imaginative
creations and clearer abstract ideas, which is a solid foundation for intellectual growth.
The child gains more precision and inspiration in the abstract operations of some
practical ideas taught in sensorial education. They will be able to cognitively evaluate
differences among stimuli. The activities require the child to touch and move real
objects that bring unity to abstract concepts.

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"The aim is not an external one, that is to say, it is not the object that the child should learn
how to place the cylinders, and that he should know how to perform an exercise. The aim is an
inner one, namely, that the child train himself to observe; that he be led to make comparisons
between objects, to form judgments, to reason and to decide; and it is in the indefinite
repetition of this exercise of attention and of intelligence that a real development ensues." 2)

The abstract ideas can be described as an ability of a human being to describe, draw an
object, predict the possible events by imagining ('seeing' things they cannot see) and
analyze the objects or a phenomena. This ability may not exist without previous
experience, interactions, and observation with the objects and the phenomena around it
that can be absorbed through senses. How would an artist imagine and draw a rose if he
never sees, smells, or feels it? How would a doctor know certain diseases by listening to
heart beats and sound in the stomach, or analyze an x-ray photograph? How would a
chef know what ingredients to add to make food better after tasting it? How would an
architect manipulate shapes, forms, textures and colors to create beauty in his designs
if he never sees and experiments with them?

Another advantage of sensorial education is to develop concentration to the task in

hand, the power of observation, and the forming of intellectual habits. Through the
control of error that is built within the Montessori sensorial materials, a child leads his
learning to experience on the environment by the use of his own hands as the organ
that connects to the psyche. Working with hands allows them to study an object better
than if they have merely look at it; and with this auto-education and his self-
correction, interruption from adults can be minimized and the child can gain focus and
concentration, his attention is directed towards the differences of dimension, and to
compare the various pieces. The sensorial activities also increase awareness of various
qualities in the environment that can be observed through senses.

"The child observes his surroundings and experience has shown us that his tendency is to take in
everything. He does not merely take them in by means of his camera-like eye, but a kind of
psycho-chemical reaction takes place so that these impressions form an integral part of his
psyche." 3)

Sensorial activities also allow the child to use language in a more accurate way. Recent
findings in neuroscience suggest that early perceptual discrimination, especially when
the brain is young and capable of change, feeds into higher-level abilities. It affects
the neural architecture of the brain, including language ability, memory, and processing
efficiency.

2)
Dr. Montessori Own Handbook, Sensory Education, p.20
3)
The Absorbent Mind, Chapter IX page 70

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Each set of materials for sensorial education must isolate single quality of perception.
Materials must be intact, complete, and promote auto-education. They must be
aesthetic, limited in number, and most importantly, must represent “materialized
abstractions”. This means that through Montessori’s Sensorial materials, abstract
concepts are made into concrete materials. Some common materials used in Montessori
sensorial education are as follow : For the perception of sight Montessori employed
color tablets for discrimination of colors; knobbed / knobless cylinders, pink tower,
broad stairs and long rods for dimension/size, geometric cabinet / solids. Long rods,
especially, contribute to the later ability in arithmetic. Constructive triangles and
tessellation are used to train the sensitivity for form/shape. Touch tablets, baric
tablets and stereognostic materials are used to refine the sense of touch. The sense
of touch is also trained and used in the learning and tracing of geometric forms and
shapes of the letters, which later will contribute to his ability to read and write.
Thermal bottles and tablets are used to refine thermoception, while smelling bottles
and tasting bottles are for refinement of olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste).
Binomial and trinomial cubes are used not only to refine the senses of visual
discrimination but also as the preparation of algebra. The silence game is used to
educate the ear of the child to noises so that he shall accustom himself to distinguish
every slight noise and compare it with sounds. The sound boxes are used to train a child
to distinguish the intensity of the sounds, while bells are used to train him to
distinguish pitch of the sound, which later contributes to his musical capacity.

"The children, after they had made the effort necessary to maintain silence, enjoyed the
sensation, took pleasure in the silence itself. They were like ships safe in a tranquil harbour,
happy in having experienced something new. It was then that I learned that the soul of the child
has its own reward, and its peculiar spiritual pleasures. After such exercises it seemed to me
that the children became closer to me, certainly they became more obedient, more gentle and
sweet." 4)

The presentation of sensorial materials is commonly given using 3-step techniques.

First, the identification of a certain quality by contrasting, for example by contrasting
the softest and the loudest sound cylinders, or the roughest and the smoothest touch
tablets. And then, the exercise grows into classification of a group of similar stimuli
by matching (as in the matching of fabrics), or identifying a quality in a three or four
mixed quality ( as in using 3 boxes of baric tablets of different weight and identifying
each baric tablet based on the weight). The child will find by himself the relationship
of the phenomena and create a unity in abstract concept. The next exercise is usually
done to show that differences in quality may appear as patterns. The exercise related
to the third stage is grading, comparing, observing and creating patterns. These
exercises allow the child to observe the environment and compare the quality of the
objects in the surroundings with the relative qualities observed in the materials.
Through these exercises, the perception will then become more structured and lead a
child into an understanding. And later, blindfolding and games can be employed to
assess the acuteness of the child's senses.

4)
Montessori Method page 212

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"The normal child may be blindfolded in the games where, for example, he is to recognize
various weights, for this does help him to intensify and concentrate his attention upon the baric
stimuli which he is to test. The blindfold adds to his pleasure, since he is proud of having been
able to guess. We speak, it is true, of games in education, but it must be made clear that we
understand by this term a free activity, ordered to a definite end; not disorderly noise, which
distracts the attention." 5)

The result of the sensorial education should be the understanding or grasping of ideas,
not only performance. When a child is able to grasp the essential qualities of the world
through sensorial education, it is now possible to offer children the essential facts of
their world, such as sensorial exploration and language activities about land and water
form, people, plants, animals, mathematics, cosmic education, music and movement, art.
Although all these activities only give the child the essential framework required for
understanding, we create the opportunity for children to be at liberty to explore,
hypothesize, and think creatively. This will lead them to the love of learning and
inquisitive mind, capacity to act purposefully, think rationally, and to deal effectively
with his environment, which in one word is called : intelligence.

“We shall not educate the intelligence if we weary it by making it learn things. Our care of the
child should be governed not by the desire “to make him learn things” but by the endeavour
always to keep burning within him the light which is called intelligence.” 6)

5)
Montessori Method, chapter XII, p.181
6)
Spontaneous Activity in Education, chapter VIII, p.239

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Bibliography

1. Montessori, Maria, The Montessori Method, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New

York, 1912.
2. Montessori, Maria, Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook, Frederick A. Stokes Company,
New York, 1914.
3. Gettman, David, Basic Montessori Activities for Under Fives, St. Martin Griffin
Press, New York 1987.
4. Standing, E. M., Montessori, Her Life and Work, The Academy Library Guild,
Fresno, California, 1959/
5. Alternative Education for the 21st Century: Philosophies, Approaches, Visions
(Philip A Woods & Glenys J. Woods), Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2009.

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