Why Is the Sensorial Material an Essential Part of Prepared Environment in a Montessori School?. Discuss How to Initiate a Child Into These Exercises with Sensorial Material
Young children like to explore experiment, tinker and try new things. They like to touch and feel and manipulate objects. They feed their minds through activities. They learn through their senses to satisfy their insatiable appetite for things to do. The first of the child’s organs to begin functioning are his senses.
Dr. Maria Montessori based her method of teaching young children considering the fact that a child between two to six years passes through the ‘sensitive period for the refinement of senses’ and they can be helped in the development of the senses while they are in this formative period. In order to serve this purpose Dr. Maria Montessori introduced a subject called ‘Sensorial’ where the materials are specially designed to enable the children to use their senses to explore different attributes of the world.
“it is necessary to begin the education of senses in the formative period, if we wish to perfect these sense development with the education which is to follow” (Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method, page 221)
Montessori classrooms provide a prepared environment where children are free to respond to their natural tendency to work. The prepared environment offers the essential elements for optimal development. The key components comprise the children, teacher and physical surroundings including the specifically designed Montessori educational material.
All of the materials in the Montessori classroom have been specifically designed to attract the interest of the student, while at the same time teaching an important concept. The purpose of each material is to isolate a certain concept the child is bound to discover. Montessori believed that “what the hand does, the mind remembers”.
The materials are simple, direct and are easy to understand. Children use these materials in spontaneous exercises. The sensorial materials are concrete bits of information which can be organized into meaningful patterns. The didactic nature of the material gives the
Dr. Maria Montessori based her method of teaching young children considering the fact that a child between two to six years passes through the ‘sensitive period for the refinement of senses’ and they can be helped in the development of the senses while they are in this formative period. In order to serve this purpose Dr. Maria Montessori introduced a subject called ‘Sensorial’ where the materials are specially designed to enable the children to use their senses to explore different attributes of the world.
“it is necessary to begin the education of senses in the formative period, if we wish to perfect these sense development with the education which is to follow” (Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method, page 221)
Montessori classrooms provide a prepared environment where children are free to respond to their natural tendency to work. The prepared environment offers the essential elements for optimal development. The key components comprise the children, teacher and physical surroundings including the specifically designed Montessori educational material.
All of the materials in the Montessori classroom have been specifically designed to attract the interest of the student, while at the same time teaching an important concept. The purpose of each material is to isolate a certain concept the child is bound to discover. Montessori believed that “what the hand does, the mind remembers”.
The materials are simple, direct and are easy to understand. Children use these materials in spontaneous exercises. The sensorial materials are concrete bits of information which can be organized into meaningful patterns. The didactic nature of the material gives the