Sensorial Area

Sensorial area

The sensorial area helps the child to organize his sensations and to discover logical relationships between different shapes, sizes, colors, textures, sounds, tastes and also to sensitize himself to subtle graduations.
The small child faces the world around him using all his senses constantly. First, it is related to the classification of the environment, this is a gradual process. The child observes, then manipulates by dropping things. To hear, the first one selects the sounds of human voices and begins to communicate. He has a need to explore his growing environment. Here begins the gradual process of the organization of the intellect.

The child at six (6) months of age can distinguish certain objects that come to mind and record them. He learns to separate different characteristics in his mind and relates them to specific objects. These impressions are channeled and externalized through the senses. This sensory experience and the need to carry out this experience begin at the beginning of life and guide the child towards the intellectual formation. Therefore, the sensorial material is to help the child in the formation of the intellect, not to give new sensations.
The objective of the sensorial materials is that the child acquires a clear and conscious classification of things.
Dr. Montessori called sensorial material "materialized abstraction" because through work the child can reach abstraction. The result is not only the ability to distinguish qualities but also to form an independent judgment and a clear and orderly mind, which is very necessary to sharpen the intelligence.
Sensorial materials help children explore and refine the five classic senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, as well as the complex senses of temperature (thermal), baric (weight) and stereognostic (identification of objects by size and shape, based only on touch).

Another important aspect of the sensorial material is the isolation of the qualities because the attention is focused when the quality is isolated. Each material isolates a quality, such as color, shape, roughness or length, and then only that quality varies. This isolation of what is different in a single aspect allows children to perceive Piaget's cognitive abilities, such as one-to-one correspondence, classification, and seriation. (Chattin-McNichols, The Montessori Controversy)