Roses smell sweet; lemon tastes sour; the rain feels cool and wet. The key to understanding everything our world has to offer starts with the senses. Children are naturally curious creatures, and they often will do things that seem odd to us, like run out into the rain to feel it pelting against their faces, or freeze movement to more clearly hear the sound a train makes in the distance.
This natural inclination towards the senses? It’s fantastic, because as we look at, touch, smell, taste, and listen to our world, we begin the learning process. It is the groundwork upon which every other subject area rests.
Maria Montessori believed that children’s senses could be refined through a specific set of sensorial activities by isolating the qualities so that one sense can be experienced at a time. For example, what happens when you remove, as much as possible, all the senses except for the sense of hearing? Your auditory sense becomes heightened. You can focus more deeply, and you can make the volume distinction between soft and softer or in music, between a single note and its sharp.
At Child of the Redwoods, we use these same, classic activities to help children develop an internal instinct for order, coordination, concentration, and independence. As our ears become more attuned, so do our attention spans and the ability to sustain our work. This is why Sensorial is the very first subject we teach in our programs.
All children under the age of 6 should have a robust sensorial education. The early experiences with the senses set the stage for all future learning. You’ll be giving your child sensorial lessons such as rough vs. smooth, soft vs. scratchy, and sour vs. sweet. You’ll also be helping your child attune their ears to distinctive sounds and how to identify the sizes and shapes of objects and gradations of color.
Much of this will happen naturally as you are out and about in the real world - especially when you are exploring in nature. Other times, you will give lessons using simple materials, such as the pink tower or color tablets, to help your child understand the concepts more deeply.
First plane children delight in their senses. Sensorial will be an exciting subject for you to teach - full of fun games for you to play together as your child progresses from simple exploration to detailed analysis.
Children in the second plane, like adults, of course use their senses to explore their world. However, the isolated experiences with the senses in their younger years have already given them a keen understanding of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations in their world. Now is the time to use each of these senses with intention to go deeper into other subject areas.
For example, when studying Physical Science, your older child will not be satisfied with feeling different rocks and minerals and classifying them by touch alone; they will want to know: why is there a variation in texture? How were they formed? In Life Science, your child will be asking: why do some animals who live in the deepest parts of the ocean lack eyes? And what other senses used for them to catch prey or evade predators?
Overall, elementary age children are well equipped to evaluate objects and living organisms by using their own senses and asking questions about their origin: inquiry learning at its best.
Young children primarily experience their world through their senses, rather than abstract logic. They need to physically interact with a concept in order to understand it. Older children will have more access to logical thinking and problem-solving abilities, but they still benefit greatly from hands-on activities.
Teaching your child to refine their senses is fairly straightforward. You will find ways to engage your child sensorially in every part of daily life! When doing laundry, you’ll invite your child to feel the warmth of the just-dried clothes. You’ll rub your fingers gently on the surface of the items of clothing, describing their texture. You’ll listen for the wind in the trees. And you’ll stop and smell the spices before you add them to the soup.
In addition, your child will benefit from isolated sensorial experiences. Montessori sensorial materials such as the red rods, pink tower, brown stairs, or sound cylinders may be materials you wish to buy or DIY. These materials are optional, but many parents do enjoy them.
To prepare two, three, four, and five-year olds to refine their senses, we focus on five domains within sensorial: sight, sound, taste, and smell & taste.
Sight: This domain emphasizes the use of the visual sense as the primary way to interact with objects
Touch: This domain emphasizes the use of the tactile, thermic, baric, and stereognostic senses as the primary way to interact with objects
Sound: This domain emphasizes the use of the auditory sense as the primary way to interact with objects
Smell & Taste: This domain emphasizes the use of the olfactory and gustatory senses as the primary way to interact with objects.
Primary-age children will spend much of their time ordering objects by size, describing how they are similar or different, identifying basic shapes, grading objects by color, weight, temperature, and texture, and combining triangles to create other triangles and a variety of other shapes. By the time they exit the program, they will come away with a strong impression of what the world has to offer one’s senses and they will be able to apply this new knowledge in other educational situations.
Sensorial is not a formal subject area for elementary-age children, but the groundwork that is established in their primary years will set them up for academic success. They will be fully prepared to give a detailed analysis of objects using any or all of their senses. As their curiosity about the world continues to grow, you will notice that they are more confident when exploring new ideas and creations of their own.