Sensory Materials As The Key To The Universe
Maria Montessori described the sensorial materials as the "key to the universe" Discuss this statement and give examples to support your discussion. "The senses, being explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge. Our apparatus for educating the senses offers the child a key to guide his explorations of the world, they cast a light upon it which makes visible to him more things in greater detail than he could see in the dark, or uneducated state. " Montessori believed that sensorial experiences began from birth to six.
At this stage, children learn and develop by using their five senses which help in making mental order in their environment. These five senses are visual sense the child learns how to visually discriminate differences between similar objects and differing objects. Second is tactile sense, the child learns through his sense of touch. “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. (Montessori, Maria (1997) The Discovery of the Child) This allows the child to really focus on what he is feeling, through a concentration of a small part of his body.
In the Stereognostic Sense Exercises, the child learns to feel objects and make recognitions based on what he feels. “When the hand and arm are moved about an object, an impression of movement is added to that touch. Such an impression is attributed to a special, sixth sense, which is called a muscular sense, and which permits many impressions to be stored in a “muscular memory”, which recalls movements that have been made. . In the Baric sense, the child learns to feel the difference of pressure or weight of different objects, this sense is heightened through the use of a blindfold or of closing your eyes . In the Thermic Sense, the child works to refine his sense of temperature. In the Olfactory and Gustatory Sense Exercises, the child is given a key to his smelling and tasting sense. Although not all smells or tastes are given to the child in these Exercises, the child does work to distinguish one smell from another or one taste from another.
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He can then take these senses, and apply them to other smells or tastes in his environment. In the Auditory Sense Exercises, the child discriminates between different sounds. In doing these different Exercises, the child will refine and make him more sensitive to the sounds in his environment; there are four kinds of sounds human, animal, natural and mechanical sounds. Dr. Montessori felt that this was the ideal period in the child’s life to introduce him the equipment that would sharpen his senses and facilitate his comprehension of the many impressions he receives through them.
So that Sensorial lessons enable the child to learn him by using his hands and his mind. We find that Dr. Benjamin Franklin once said “tell me and I forget. Teach me and remember. Involve me and learn”. In order to serve this purpose; Dr. Maria Montessori introduced a subject called ‘Sensorial', it comes from the word sense or senses. As there are no new experiences for the child to take from the Sensorial work where the materials are specially designed to enable the child to use his senses to explore different attributes of the world the child is able to concentrate on the refinement of all his senses, from visual to stereognostic. Dr. 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 sense along with the others and they can be helped in the development of the senses while they are in this formative period. "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. " Dr. Montessori describe Sensorial education as "the key to the universe” because it revealing to the children, a deeper knowledge about the outside world. All of the material is aesthetically pleasing. They attract the child’s attention to the objects and allow the child to manipulate the materials with easy way. The material must be complete.
This allows the child who is working with the material to finish through the whole 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 students 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. “The sensorial materials comprise a series of objects which are grouped together according to some physical quality which they have, such as colour, shape, size, sound, texture, weight, temperature, and so forth.
Every single group of objects represents the same quality but in different degrees; there is consequently a regular gradual distinction between the various objects and, when this is possible, one that is mathematically fixed. Every series of objects is graded so that there is a maximum and a minimum, which determines its limits, or which, more properly, are fixed by the use which a child makes of them” (Montessori Maria, The Discovery of Childhood, Page. 100 chapter 6). Dr. Montessori believed in the same ideal and with her development of Sensorial teaching brought a new concept to teaching the world throughout her Sensorial materials. So that the sensorial materials in the Montessori classroom enable the child to become aware of details by revealing to him strongly contrasting sensations like black and white and progressing to various gradations of this sensation such as; the many different shades of red in the colour tablets as an example, facilitate his knowledge of colours and eventually his understanding of the abstraction of a certain colour and finally the abstraction of color itself.
The sensorial equipment, worked on systematically, builds a rooted and comprehensive foundation for the child's intellectual future. This is why Montessori has appropriately named the sensorial materials as "the key to the universe". We find that the sensorial materials related with the environment around the child, he try to discover on his own how to make things he see in the environment, he often want to make his own books and do so with tools of ruler and stapler, make his own constructive triangles, or geometric solids.
He often explores different ways of making the same end product – e. g. making a cylinder with paper, and then trying with clay. The other areas of the curriculum for the children of this age are related with the ‘sensorial’ materials such as mathematics, language and culture. The sensorial materials respond to the way that the child learns at this age through the senses rather than the intellect. There are materials for the refinement of each sense, with each activity isolating one particular quality, for example; color, size, sound, taste or weight.
We can take a pink tower as an example, it made up of ten pink cubes of varying sizes. In 3 year-old the child constructs a tower with the largest cube on the bottom and the smallest on top. This material isolates the concept of size. The cubes are all the same colour and texture; the only difference is their size. Other materials isolate different concepts: colour tablets for colour, geometry materials for form and so on. As the child's exploration continues, the materials interrelate and build upon each other. Later, in the primary years, new aspects of some materials unfold.
When studying volume, for example, the child may return to the pink tower and discover that its cubes progress incrementally from one cubic centimeter to one cubic decimetre. At the pre-school age when the child is use the sensory information, these materials help the child to order and make sense of his world and heighten his perception and wonder of it. Through working with the different sensorial materials the child has refined his discrimination of size to the point where he wants to know how much one object is bigger than other one.
The mathematic materials flow naturally from here. When a child reaches this point, he needs to introduce to concrete representations of mathematical concepts and given language to describe these, for example: large, long, thick, heavy. They are required to sort, pair, grade and sequence using all of their senses - visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory and olfactory. Through these activities they develop the ability to solve mathematical problems for example: decimal system, geometry and algebra by compare, contrast, and make judgments.
The same applies with language. The subtle preparation the child has been given in this environment such as songs, stories, poems, or the control over the movement of the hand through knobbed cylinders and geometric cabinet, they allow the child from 4 and 5 year olds to effortlessly start to write and read. Montessori education has been using a set of ‘sandpaper letters’ individual boards with the primary symbol for each of the 26 letters as the sounds in the English language. Three year-old children see and feel these symbols and make the corresponding sound, bsorbing the combination of sound and symbol through three different senses (auditory-visual and tactile sense. Finally, the cultural materials bring to the child his world and the animals, plants and people within it. Like everything offered to the child at this age, the materials are sensory-based and are introduced to the child in an orderly way; first the world, then the plants; the child is introduced to the botanical classification in plants and their parts through classified cards, and an experience of how leaves can be classified by their shape through the leaf cabinet.
Through these, the child is given keys to enhance his exploration of the outdoor environment and garden, and ultimately the world. The child starts to notice shapes of leaves as he walks in the park, and this deepens his appreciation of his environment. The sensorial materials also are the extension for the world of animals, then mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish; in the same way as with the world of plants, the child is given presentations of animal classification through the classified cards. Through his exploration he finds the keys to understanding the characteristics of each family and this is applied to his locality.
The sensorial materials extend to geography: The children discover how our world can be divided into land and water, and how these two can further be classified by their shape - land into islands, peninsulas, isthmuses and capes; water into lake, gulf, strait and bay. These offer a key to the young mind so attuned to order and pattern, and children start to appreciate even the lakes and islands they discover in their local parks. They also explore how our world is divided into continents, and how each continent is divided into countries, and towns and so on.
In this way they get an appreciation of where their ‘place’ is in the world. The education of senses makes men observers. 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. The aim of sense training is not only that a child shall know the colours forms and textures but also that he refines his sense through an exercise of attention and through comparison. The Sensorial Materials have been given many names: materialized abstractions, key to universe, path to culture.
The goal of sensorial is to aid a child refine his senses so they can learn more from his environment and grow spiritually and physically. This is done through manipulation with carefully designed materials and direct experience with the world around them. The Sensorial technique is a multi-faceted method of learning. Through the use of singular quality focus activities the child’s senses are awakened. The sensory revelation that is experienced by the child during this period leads to a greater intellectual capability. The sensorial practice sets the groundwork for further intellectual growth.
The crucial roles the senses have in education are illustrated through the connection between the various sensorial experiences the child has and all of the activities in the Sensorial environment. Because of Montessori’s focus on sensorial exploration and the Sensitive Periods for crucial brain development, there may be no computers for children’s use in the Children’s House environment. However, through the Montessori materials the children are building strong foundations to be able to learn to use this technology when appropriate.
They are learning how to think, solve problem and create. It is striking how several pioneers and highly successful individuals in this field have Montessori backgrounds. They even attribute their success in innovation to their childhood years in a Montessori classroom.
Bibliography
- Montessori Maria: The secret of childhood. Montessori Maria: absorbent mind. Montessori Maria, quotes, Internet) Montessori Maria: discovery of the childhood
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Sensory Materials As The Key To The Universe. (2018, Jan 08). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/sensory-materials-as-the-key-to-the-universe/
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