There are six sensitive periods common to all children from birth till age six. They are those for order (Between 1 to 2 years), Small Objects (between 1 to 2 years), Co-ordination of movement (Between 2&1/2 to 4 years), Social aspect of life (2 to 5 years) and Language (From birth till 6 years). It is most important that the adult knows when a child is going through a sensitive period so as to encourage this learning time by giving the child the necessary materials he would need. If a child of his own free will keeps repeating an activity over and over again, shows a special attraction to a particular object, material or activity and insists on going back to it or when he is deeply engrossed in a particular activity despite distractions but will only willingly withdraw after he completes the activity- then he is going through a sensitive period.
Each one of these sensitive periods must be aided by the right environment because it is the environment that provides the child with what to concentrate on during his sensitive period. The Absorbent mind of the child must also be aided by the right environment because it is from there that the child absorbs impressions and information which he uses to reconstruct himself. “There is an interchange between the individual, the spiritual embryo and its environment. It is through the environment that the individual is moulded and brought to perfection”. (The Secret of Childhood, Chapter 6, Pg. 35). The environment must be prepared to meet the developmental needs of the child.
A prepared environment is one that is prepared by a knowledgeable and sensitive adult who takes into consideration all the necessary factors that the child will use to reconstruct himself. Montessori’s idea of a prepared environment is that everything the child comes in contact with would facilitate and maximize independent learning and exploration. It composed of six essential components; Freedom, Structure and Order, Reality and Nature, Montessori Materials (Maria Montessori designed many materials and grouped them into different learning areas) and Development of community life.
For the child to explore his prepared environment he must make use of his senses. He must see, touch, smell, taste and hear his environment. His senses must make contact with his environment for him to reconstruct himself. "A child is by his nature an avid explorer of his surroundings because he has not yet had the time or means of knowing them precisely." (The Discovery of the Child, Chapter 6, Pg. 102). It therefore follows that if exploration is necessary for child development then the instruments of exploration, which is the senses, must be trained from an early age. "It is necessary to begin the education of the senses in the formative period, if we wish to perfect this sense development with the education which is to follow. The education of the senses should be begun methodically in infancy, and should continue during the entire period of instruction which is to prepare the individual for life in society."(The Montessori Method, Chapter 14, Pg. 222).
Dr. Maria Montessori believed that there is nothing in the intellect which first does not exist in the senses. The child's intellect does not work in isolation, but is everywhere and is always intimately bound up with his body, particularly with his nervous and muscular system. During the first 3 years of his life, the young child would have absorbed a large amount of information from his environment. Yet, the information at this point is a sea of impressions in the unconscious mind. As a child works further the young mind becomes aware of concepts of size, color, weight, quantity and so on. This is the beginning of sensorial education. Dr Montessori based her method of educating the senses considering the fact that a child between two to six years passes through the ‘sensitive period for the refinement of senses’ along with the others 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 didactic materials are specially designed to enable the children to use their senses to explore different attributes of the world.
Sensorial education is the training of the senses. An object possesses nine qualities as following: Shape, Colour, Texture, Sound, Smell, Taste, Temperature, Weight and size. By using his all five basic senses i.e. visual sense, tactile sense, auditory sense, gustatory sense, olfactory sense and also using the additional senses like baric sense (sense of weight), thermic sense (sense of temperature) and stereognostic sense (sense of shape and size of an object by holding it with hands) the child explores all the nine qualities of an object but in separate sessions and also with separate materials. She broke down the five basic senses into nine senses; Visual, Tactile, Olfactory, Gustatory, Auditory, Chromatic, Baric, Thermic and Stereognostic Sense.
Sensorial education helps develop a child's intellect. Whether you believe intelligence is genetic or produced by environment, you can further it by education. Intelligence is built upon by experiences and thought processes. Sensorial impressions of child's environment are not the same as sensorial education. Impressions are feelings and not an intellectual building block. The human mind needs information to discriminate and appreciate its culture, art, music, poetry, reading and all aspects of the environment. Early sensorial educational material was provided by Dr. Montessori for this purpose.
Young children like to explore, experiment, 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. Montessori saw the importance of the manipulation of objects to aid the child in better understanding his environment. Through the child’s work with Sensorial material, the child is helped to make abstractions, he is helped in making distinctions in his environment, and the child is given the knowledge not through word of mouth, but through his own experiences.
Dr. Montessori designed her sensorial materials considering these facts. “Although the sense of touch is spread throughout the surface of the body, the Exercises given to the children are limited to the tips of the fingers, and particularly, to those of the right hand.” (The Discovery of the Child). Her materials for the Sensorial work came from her own observations and from ideas and materials from the French doctors Itard and Seguin. Unlike the material used for Practical Life, this material has either never been seen or never been used by the child in his everyday life. With this said however, the child will receive no new experiences through the use of the material. This was purposefully thought through in order to give the child what he knows, but might not yet realize, and to then refine his knowledge. In order to do this, the material is presented in a specific way or in a specific pattern: the child learns to match the similar things, then he is shown how to grade the material based on its quality, and then he receives the language related to his work. In presenting the material to the child in this way allows him to fully understand the concept of his work.
All of the Sensorial materials were designed keeping the same ideas in mind. All of the material isolates the one quality that is to be worked with by the child. This allows the child to focus on that one quality.
All of the materials have, what is called, a control of error. This calls to the child to make the corrections himself. All of the material is esthetically pleasing. Such as with the Practical Life materials, this attracts the child’s attention to the objects and allows the child to manipulate the materials with ease.
All of the material must be complete. This allows the child who is working with the material to finish through the entire piece of work without having to stop and find a missing piece.
All of the material is limited. The first use of the term limited refers to the fact that there is only one of each material in the environment. This calls for other children to build on their patience. The second use of the word limited is in reference to the idea that not all of one quality or piece of information is given to the child. This child is not given every color in the world, but only a select few. This gives the child the keys to the information so it peaks his curiosity and leads him to learn more out of his own interest. Most importantly, all of the material could be called “materialized abstractions”. This means that though Montessori’s Sensorial materials, abstract concepts are made into concrete materials.
Sensorial education has a great deal of importance in Montessori curriculum. First it provides us the opportunity to see if there are any deficiencies in vision, hearing, etc. The earlier these problems are addressed, the more successful the child will be in overcoming difficulties.
It is very important because it helps fine-tune the various senses to aid in future professions. Montessori talks about the importance of a cook being able to smell the difference between fresh and tainted food or a doctor being able to hear the slightest irregularity in a heartbeat. Sensorial education helps refine the senses so that the child can better appreciate the world around him. He learns different colours, sounds, tastes, textures, etc. It increases his desire to explore his world and allows him to constructively categorize all that he encounters.
It aids the natural development of the child and gives him a sense of self identity and security within the learning environment. Every child, even the handicapped, has at least one sense he can rely on.
Sensitive periods are transitory. Sense impressions are of long duration. Sensitive period can be passed but once sensibility has been acquired it will be long lasting.
Sensorial education prepares the child for community environment, so that he is aware of things around him.
Through physical and social growth, the child’s mental and emotional life is enhanced.
"The education of the senses has, as its aim, the refinement of the differential perception of stimuli by means of repeated exercises." (The Montessori Method, Chapter 12, Pg. 174). Dr Montessori designed activities for the different senses using different materials. Exercises for the sense of sight develop this sense by requiring the eye to perceive differences in size, form, and color. Size materials include the Knobbed Cylinders, The Pink Tower, The Brown stair, The Red Rods, and The Knobless Cylinders. Each of these materials is graded by size and by working with them the child would develop a perception for dimension.
The knobbed cylinder is a wooden cylindrical block containing ten cylinders with knobs. Each cylinder fits into its respective hole or socket in the block. There are four different blocks, each varying in height and diameter. By using his sense of sight and perception of dimension, the child is expected to fit the right cylinder into the right socket. Doing this activity would first develop the child’s language. He would be able to use words like deep, shallow, wide, narrow, thick, thicker, thickest and big, bigger, biggest in relation. At home he would be able to say who is fatter, bigger or taller. Indirectly, as the child holds the knobs, he is being prepared for writing in holding a pencil. The ten cylinders also act as a preparation for the decimal system in mathematics.
Montessori isolates the chromatic sense with her colour tablet activities. Colour Box one for example contains three pairs of primary colours in tablets of wood. In the first presentation the child pairs the colours, in the second presentation he is taught the names of the colours by the three period lesson. Children first distinguish between primary colors, then secondary, and finally the various gradations of each. These exercises allow the child to look at a tree and see the many variations of green found in the leaves or the blues and purples of the ocean. The child can truly perceive the beauty found on this earth.
“Although the sense of touch is spread throughout the surface of the body, the exercises given to the children are limited to the tips of the fingers and particularly to those of the right hand”. (The Discovery of The Child, Chapter 7, Pg. 115). The tactile sense is interpreted through the skin. It is your perception of that which you touch. Montessori activities have the child start with touching different grades of sandpaper. These are called touch boards. Later he moves on to different materials in the environment. Prior to handling the different materials, the fingertips are “sensitized” either by vigorously rubbing them on the carpet or dunking them in tepid water. The sensitization heightens the perception of differences between extra-fine and super-fine sandpaper, and between silk and linen. This learning tool achieves muscular control through lightness of touch, which prepares them for writing.
Montessori recognized that while the eye can perceive differences in size and form, the understanding is heightened when the hand is also engaged. She believed that the hand was the direct link to the brain. To understand what a curve really is, you have to feel it and experience it. Children are encouraged to look at objects while touching them with both hands to get the whole feel of the object. They are also encouraged to touch them with closed eyes or a blindfold in order to experience them much in the way a blind person would. “In such a case, there is not simply an impression of a completed movement, but knowledge of the external object ”. (The Discovery of The Child, Chapter 7, Pg. 119). She developed stereognostic materials which are three dimensional geometric solids; Cylinder, Cube, Cone, Sphere, Ovoid, Ellipsoid, Square based pyramid, Prism, Rectangular Prism and Triangular Prism. This activity aids the child in recognising these solids and prepares them for mathematics.
The baric sense is feeling different weights. The child again uses the whole arm in conjunction with the hands and the tactile sense to determine light vs. heavy. Montessori developed three boxes containing three sets of wooden tablets of different weight; light, medium and heavy. The child is blindfolded and asked which is heavy and which is light. The activity can translate into other objects in the environment as the child becomes a sort of human balance or scale. This improves greatly his ability to make judgement while enhancing his perception of small differences in weight.
The thermic sense takes the tactile sense a step further and teaches the child to distinguish temperature. He determines hot and cold by holding metal bottles in his hand or by touching different kinds of stones and other materials. He grades them from hottest to cold or from cold to hot. Knowledge of the thermic sense protects the child from harm. It helps him to make judgement while stimulating his hands.
The olfactory sense is interpreting the world through the nose by smelling. Children match different herbs or other smells in the smelling bottles. Eventually more abstract activities take place that match the scent to a picture.
The gustatory sense is interpreting the world through the tongue by tasting. The child learns to distinguish between sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Tasting activities can be done in a group, as an individual work, or through food preparation activities.
“Training in hearing of sounds must begin with silence as it departs from immobility to go on the perception of sounds and noises caused by movement”. (The Discovery of the Child, Chapter 8, Pg. 136).The auditory sense is interpreting the world through the ears. In order to understand sound, children must first be introduced to silence. Then they can be introduced to matching and grading of the different sounds in the sound boxes. Games can be played in which the child is blindfolded and has to identify a person’s voice, or from where in the room a sound is coming. This activity trains the child to listen more accurately and also develops his ability to concentrate.
Sensorial education helps refine the senses so that the child can better appreciate the world around him. He learns different colours, sounds, tastes, textures, etc. The child who has worked with the sensorial materials has not only acquired a greater skill in the use of senses but also guides his exploration of the outside world. It makes him an observer and allows him to constructively categorise all that he encounters.
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
