Montessori in a Minute: Sensorial Work

Sensorial Work In a Montessori Classroom

Sensorial work is one way that Montessori education fosters your child’s sense of wonder with the world. Until they develop complex language to ask questions, children exclusively gather information about their world through sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Our teachers understand that a Toddler, Bridge Primary, or Primary student’s senses are powerful learning tools that have been refined over years of exploration. The Sensorial curriculum offers children a path to understanding more abstract concepts like math, language, and social development through using their senses.

The Value of Sensorial Work

Many sensorial activities have a puzzle element that promotes critical thinking, problem solving, and increased memory.

Tools like the Pink Tower, Knobless Cylinders, Binomial and Trinomial Cubes, and more focus on visual sense. Children develop discrimination skills for size, shape, color smell, and sound as well as essential language development through the repetition and mastery of these activities. Students can’t help but learn as they use more precise description words like “smaller,” “biggest,” “thinner,” or “lightest” as they use their senses and describe their activity.

Tactile activities involving a child’s sense of touch like the Thermic Tiles or Touch Tablets introduce language concepts like “roughness,” “softness,” “hardness,” and “temperature.” Auditory work like the Sound Cylinders require a child’s sense of hearing to develop sound discrimination and build your child’s attention span. Your child also works with food in the Practical Life or Cultural Studies areas and explores the Smelling Jars to refine the students’ taste and smell senses while introducing texture and taste vocabulary.

The Montessori in a Minute Series

Montessori schools like Hudson Montessori School have five key areas of learning in the Montessori environment, including Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Mathematics, and Culture.

This Montessori in a Minute series regularly explores the unique benefits of fundamental materials and areas of the classroom.

To learn more about Hudson Montessori School’s interdisciplinary, theme-based learning approach to education, the Montessori philosophy and methodology, or how the school fosters the love of learning for children in Jersey City age 2 to sixth grade, sign up for an open house tour or contact us directly for more information.