The Montessori classrooms is filled with materials which are both wonder-ful and didactic, introducing specific, precise concepts but doing so in an elegant presentation. The Montessori Bells are a perfect example of this balance between grace and practicality, making concrete and self-correcting experiences with auditory discrimination and the diatonic scale. The Bells include a series of individual, simple bells, each on its own platform and representing one of the tone

A companion material to the Knobbed Cylinders, the Knobless Cylinders offer children extended practice with the relationships of height, width and volume. Four boxes are available to explore, with each containing a series of ten cylinders of varying relationships. In one box, the height of the cylinders is identical, but the widths change. In another, the widths are identical, but the height changes. In a third, the width decreases as the height increases. In a fourth, the wi

The Early Childhood Montessori classrooms provide rich supports as children refine their abilities to perceive through their senses and to order and classify what they perceive. Each all the senses is represented in the Sensorial area of the curriculum, with materials to help build children's visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory and gustatory senses. The "sixth" sense is the stereognostic sense, and it's represented here, too. The stereognostic sense, sometimes called tact

Children learn concretely, adopting new concepts best when they can feel them in their hands and move them about. For some concepts, like quantities from one through ten, this is easy enough to provide: one bead fits in the hand just as ten do. How, though, can we introduce children to concepts that are larger than our ability to present in the classroom? In Montessori, we accomplish this through child-scaled models, combined with beautiful images of the things they represent

The Sensorial materials may emphasize the development and refinement of the senses, but they are equally powerful tools for supporting the child's mathematical mind. Elegantly constructed, these materials introduce elements of geometry and algebra through hands-on, concrete, didactic exploration. The child first explores qualities of dimension: height, width and depth. The Pink Tower, Broad Stair, Red Rods, Knobbed and Knobless Cylinder Blocks give children the opportunity to

For tools that are so influential to our experience of the world, we tend to overlook the sense of smell and sense of taste when we think about our children's development. When was the last time you wondered, "Am I doing all I can to make sure my child has a vibrant sense of smell?" And beyond expressing frustration with mealtime picky-eaters, how often do you really worry about your child's ability to discern bitter from sweet? While they don't draw a lot of attention to obs

Children are fascinated with color, and learning to name and distinguish colors is one of those early skills parents delight in observing. Maybe you've shared the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? with your child. Maybe bedtime has included My Many Colored Days or The Day the Crayons Quit. Color is an accessible way for children to learn to discern differences in their environment, to understand their worlds with more specificity and to orient themselves. Indee

We can sometimes underestimate the power of the Sensorial materials, thinking about them only as simple activities that let children practice using their senses. They are great practice- that's true- but they're also important tools for teacher observation, to understand children's development and the refinement of the tools through which the rest of the curriculum will unfold. It's important, then, to think about what to look for when you're observing children's sensory deve

While we may not immediately think of it, a child's tactile discernment is essential to how that child understands and experiences the world. The sense of touch allows children to appreciate the qualities of different objects, from their shape to the materials from which they're made, their texture, their temperature, their weight. And unlike visual or auditory discrimination, tactile discrimination has to happen up close. Children must touch and move and act upon objects to

Materials across the Montessori classroom work together to respond to children's development from multiple angles. Some share similar direct objectives. Some support the same facets of development through indirect objectives. The materials for auditory discrimination in the Sensorial area work together to refine the child's ability to perceive differences in sound, so that that perception can be used in other areas to learn language, music and other stimuli. Auditory developm