How Does Activity with the Sensorial Materials Encourage Observation and Perception of the Environment?
“The senses are points of contact with the environment.” How does activity with the sensorial materials encourage observation and perception of the environment?
The child in his mother’s womb is a physical embryo; He develops his physical structures and increases in size while in the womb. Once he is born, leaving the comfort of his mother’s womb, he must go through a phase of reconstruction or incarnation. He must become like his parents in movement, speech and other areas. To do this he does not possess fixed or predetermined instincts dictating his development like in animals who immediately behave like their parents once they are born. He possesses predetermined patterns of psychic unfolding. He gradually unfolds to exhibit the characteristic of his kind in movement, speech and actions. He is not taught by his parents to walk, talk or cry. He is not taught to sing, climb or think. "This fashioning of the human personality is a secret work of 'incarnation'. The child is an enigma. All that we know is that he has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be. He must 'become incarnate' with the help of his own will." (The Secret of Childhood, Chapter 6, Pg. 32). The means by which he does this can only be described as spiritual hence he is described at this stage by the term “Spiritual Embryo’’.
Inasmuch as the child incarnates by a spiritual means, he still needs some aids to development. Nature has provided him with two internal aids; The Absorbent mind and Sensitive periods, while two external aids, a prepared environment and freedom are provided by the adult, usually a trained teacher.
With his absorbent mind the child absorbs impressions and information from his environment. “Adults admire the environment; they can remember it and things about it; but the child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear.”(The
The child in his mother’s womb is a physical embryo; He develops his physical structures and increases in size while in the womb. Once he is born, leaving the comfort of his mother’s womb, he must go through a phase of reconstruction or incarnation. He must become like his parents in movement, speech and other areas. To do this he does not possess fixed or predetermined instincts dictating his development like in animals who immediately behave like their parents once they are born. He possesses predetermined patterns of psychic unfolding. He gradually unfolds to exhibit the characteristic of his kind in movement, speech and actions. He is not taught by his parents to walk, talk or cry. He is not taught to sing, climb or think. "This fashioning of the human personality is a secret work of 'incarnation'. The child is an enigma. All that we know is that he has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be. He must 'become incarnate' with the help of his own will." (The Secret of Childhood, Chapter 6, Pg. 32). The means by which he does this can only be described as spiritual hence he is described at this stage by the term “Spiritual Embryo’’.
Inasmuch as the child incarnates by a spiritual means, he still needs some aids to development. Nature has provided him with two internal aids; The Absorbent mind and Sensitive periods, while two external aids, a prepared environment and freedom are provided by the adult, usually a trained teacher.
With his absorbent mind the child absorbs impressions and information from his environment. “Adults admire the environment; they can remember it and things about it; but the child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear.”(The
Bibliography: Montessori, M., The Discovery of the Child, Montessori-Pierson Publishing Company, The Netherlands, 2009. Montessori, M., The Secret of Childhood, Fides Publishers, Switzerland, 1966. Montessori, M., The Absorbent Mind, Montessori-Pierson Publishing Company, The Netherlands, 2009. Montessori, M., The Montessori Method, Clio Press, England, 1998