Sensorial

Baldersby Park Montessori believes that children learn through their senses, these being, Smell, Taste, Touch, Hearing and Vision.

A child′s senses begin to develop in the womb when the baby starts to hear and from there continues throughout life. It is vital for children to be allowed to freely explore using their senses.

Montessori equipment and special materials allow this within a carefully prepared environment. The materials in Baldersby Park Montessori classroom are always child sized, always complete, and will always be clean and natural.

Learning through the senses with Montessori

One of the first Montessori materials to be used by a child first starting in the nursery class will be the knobbed cylinders, these are sets of cylinders differing in dimensions. Also on the sensorial shelves you will find a set of pink cubes, this we call the Pink Tower. The child grades the pink cubes from the largest to the smallest, thus building the tower.

Other activities include, smelling bottles, sound cylinders, touch fabrics, long rods and the knobless cylinders. There are also the binomial and trinomial cubes which are like a puzzle cube, these are very interesting in themselves but later turn out to be a physical illustration of mathematical formulae. Each of these materials is used to refine one of the sensory areas and each will be presented to the child to be used in an exact way to aid their development. The sensorial materials also indirectly prepare the child for reading and writing later on.