THE ART OF LISTENING
The art of listening carefully is a quality worth cultivating for a life time of use. Many youngsters in today's noisy world have formed the habit of "turning off"their attention to sound. They make no effort to distinguish the many sounds that assault their ears and thus they block themselves from many learning activities.
Listening attentively is a vital preparation for learning the sounds of the letters for reading. Montessori designed several sensorial games to help the child concentrate on particular sounds. In one game a child is blindfolded and asked to identify particular sounds in the classroom, such as the noise of opening a window, closing a door, closing a book, or pouring water. In another game, he tries to identify the voices of his classmates without looking at the students who are speaking.
Listening attentively is a vital preparation for learning the sounds of the letters for reading. Montessori designed several sensorial games to help the child concentrate on particular sounds. In one game a child is blindfolded and asked to identify particular sounds in the classroom, such as the noise of opening a window, closing a door, closing a book, or pouring water. In another game, he tries to identify the voices of his classmates without looking at the students who are speaking.
THE SOUND BOXES
To help children become more aware of the intensity of sound, Montessori designed a set of six cylinder-shaped wooden boxes with red tops. Each box contains a small amount of a different substance such as salt, rice, dried beans, buttons or pebbles. The sounds produced when the child shakes the boxes vary intensity from soft to loud. This set of boxes corresponds to a second set that produces a similar sound. The child must find the mates by listening. Later he can grade the boxes in one set from the loudest to the softest.
THE BELLS
Another quality of sound that is interesting to children is pitch. To isolate this quality, Montessori designed a set of black and white bells corresponding to the black and white keys on the piano. The bells are alike in every detail except the pitch, that is heard when the child strikes them gently. A similar set of brown bells corresponds exactly in pitch to the black and white set. The exercise consists of pairing the bells and later grading them in the order of the musical scale.
The teacher begins by allowing a child to use only two pairs of bells with a wide differential in pitch. When the child is able to match these successfully, she gradually increases the number of pairs with which she can work. As the contrast between the pairs decreases, the exercise becomes more challenging. Sometimes the children build not only the scale but little melodies as well, using about nine or ten of the bells. This type of ear training is good preparation for any further pursuit in music.
THE ART OF FEELINGS
A child loves to touch. Much of the world comes to her through her hands as she investigates everything in her environment. She can use the sense of touch in a more meaningful way if she wears a blindfold. This eliminates visual recognition of an object and challenges her to recognize something with her fingers.
In the Montessori classroom the child begins tactile activities with the Objective Bag. This is a simple bag containing a collection of familiar objects such as a cup, lid, button, string, and ball. The child grasps each object and names it without looking at it.
Further education of the tactile sense is accomplished when the child uses the Rough and Smooth Boards, which let her feel the difference between sand paper and smooth wood.
THE SWATCHES
A parallel exercise for educating the tactile sense is a box containing many pairs of swatches of different materials such as wool, flannel, silk, cotton, velvet, canvas, lace, etc. In this exercise a child mixes all the swatches, puts on a blindfold and then matches the pairs by feeling them. The child can correct the exercise herself by removing the blindfold and looking to see if each pair is correctly matched. While doing this exercise, the child also learns the correct names of the materials, thus giving her an opportunity to further extend her vocabulary during the years when she is especially sensitive to language development.
THE GEOMETRIC SOLIDS
Many of the sensorial exercises, by their nature, are remote preparation for academic learning. For example, the child who has learned to listen carefully will be able to perceive subtle differences in the sounds of the letters. Of equal importance to language skills are the geometric materials, which help the child to concentrate on different shapes.
Since shape is the defining characteristic of each letter of the alphabet, Dr. Montessori designed several sensorial exercises to make children aware of this quality. She began with the Geometric solids This is a set of materials alike in color and texture and of approximately the same size, but differing from each other in shape. The set includes the cube, the sphere, the cone, the cylinder, the pyramid, the rectangular prism, and the triangular prism.
The children learn to recognize these shapes by handling the solids, looking at them, and playing group games where they try to identify the shapes while wearing a blindfold. They also learn to relate the solids to common things in the environment; for example, the sphere is like a ball; the cylinder is like a drinking glass; the cone is like an ice cream cone.
Vocabulary building is an important part of this activity. Children love a big word like "supercalifragilistic,"in the same way, they enjoy the challenge of big terms like cylinder, pyramid, and rectangular prism. It is much easier for children to learn what a pyramid or a sphere is when they can hold it in their hands, than it is for them to learn it later in abstract form. When they study geometry in future years, children who have been in a Montessori class will have their necessary vocabulary based on concrete representations.
THE GEOMETRIC CABINET
The Geometric Cabinet presents the plane geometric shapes to the child. This cabinet contains six drawer of flat wooden insets representing different types of triangles, different sizes of rectangles, different polygons, different sizes of circles, irregular four-sided figures and various curved figures. Each inset has a little knob by which the child can move it in and out of its wooden frame. She does this at first like a puzzle.
Later she matches the wooden insets to similar shapes on printed cards, The first set of cards has each shape printed in solid blue. The second set has the shape represented with a thick blue outline. The third set has each shape drawn with a pencil-thin blue outline. As the child matches the wooden insets to these three sets of cards, she gradually makes the transition from a shape in solid form to a shape outlined with a pencil. This is a remote preparation for recognizing the different shapes of written letters and numerals.
THE CONSTRUCTIVE TRIANGLES
The Constructive Triangles are brightly colored flat triangles that the child puts together like a puzzle. Each triangle has one or more edges with a black line border. By matching the black lines, a child is able to construct many of the straight-edged geometric figures. The complete figures illustrate how these shapes are actually composed of triangles. The picture shows triangles composed of one, two, three, and four triangles.
THE CYLINDER BLOCKS
Indirect preparation for the motor technique of writing begins when a child uses the Cylinder Blocks. These are four oblong blocks of natural colored wood. Each block contains ten cylinder-shaped insets that can be handled by a knob attached to the top. The cylinders vary in graduated differences of depth and diameter.
At first a child works with one cylinder block. She takes all the cylinders out, mixes them up, and replaces each in its corresponding socket. The exercise has a built-in control of error because each cylinder fits correctly in only one particular hole. Later, she works with two, three, and finally four blocks at the same time. Eventually, a child can perform the whole exercise while wearing a blindfold.
Essentially this is a sensorial exercise in a discrimination of size. However, it is also an important muscular activity because the child grasps the little knobs with thumb and the same two fingers that she will later use to hold a pencil. Each time she does the exercise, she gains control of the small muscles that she will eventually use for writing. Other materials in the classroom, that require the handling of this same type of knob, are the insets in the Geometric Cabinet and the pieces in the Puzzle Maps.
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