Sensorial Curriculum - Visual Perception

In the Sensorial curriculum of a Montessori classroom, we develop children's perceptiveness with each of their senses. Our goal is to increase their awareness of what they perceive through their senses and help them develop a mental framework for organizing and understanding these perceptions. The Sensorial curriculum provides a cognitive foundation for math and science.

Within the Sensorial curriculum, we have materials and activities to cultivate each of the senses. This post will only include the Visual perception materials - more to come later!

Size

Cylinder blocks (or knobbed cylinders) - each of the 4 blocks contains 10 cylinders that vary by different dimensions. A child begins working with one block at a time and progresses to being able to do all four blocks (40 cylinders) together.
The cylinder blocks are an example of a self-correcting Montessori material - the child can tell if there is an error because not all the cylinders will fit in!

 Most children are not able to see the small differences between the ten cubes of the Pink Tower when they are first introduced to it. Through repetition and exploration, they gradually become aware and learn to sequence the cubes by size - and feel very proud when they do! The opportunity to develop problem-solving skills is built into all these materials. A child may visually notice that they have a piece out of order, but it is additional challenge to figure out how to fix it. 

The Brown Stair (or Broad Stairs) provides the next level of challenge - the prisms vary in two dimensions instead of all three. After a child can sequence the brown stairs, they enjoy rolling a small wood marble down the steps, hearing the pitch change as it descends.  

The Red Rods come next - 10 rods ranging from 10cm to 1m.

There are additional activities that the children can do with each of these materials, alone or in combination.

A few examples of the many possibilities:

This child has built the Pink Tower with two sides flush,  creating a 1cm ledge on each level. The smallest (1cm) cube can be carefully slid along the step on each cube. 

Color

The first color box has only the three primary colors (red, yellow, blue), with two tablets of each color. Color box II adds secondary colors (orange, green, purple) as well as pink, brown, black, gray, and white.

After matching the color tablets, a child can walk around the room with a basket, looing for an object that is the same color as one of the tablet pairs. They bring the object back to the mat, then go in search of another color. This activity expands their conceptualization of color and exercised their working memory. (The tablets stay on the mat, which adds the challenge of needing to store the color in their mind as they go around the room.)

The Box of 32 pairs provides an increased challenge - matching pairs in four shades of each color. When we introduce the material, we take just one color out of the box at a time and match the four pairs before moving onto the next color. This child has chosen a different approach. She is purposefully engaged so we observe with interest to see what we can learn about her thought process and do not intervene or disrupt her focus.

Color Box 3 has seven shades of each color that can be graded from darkest to lightest

Shape

Children learn the names and forms of geometric shapes with the Geometry Cabinet