Using Senses in Montessori

Video Transcript

"This is sensorial at Northstar Montessori Preschool. In sensorial everything is a lead-in to math, so when you see the red rods, which are just a solid color, they're a lead-in to the red and blue rods that you'll find in math. The only difference is that in math they have delineations so you can determine the actual number of each section. Sensorial has to do with all the different senses so we may do activities to do with sight, sound, taste, all the way through. This is an obvious lead-in to math, these are called the geometric solids. What we do with these is we teach them the names of them so that they know that when they, later in math when they have to figure out the volume of something, that an ellipsoid, has two equal ends. They know they've held it in their hand, they've seen it with their eyes, so they know that what the shape is, and it's much easier for them in later math, to figure out exactly what it is when they've seen it. When it's drawn on paper it's much more abstract, so this just gives it a little more of a concrete feeling for children once they've seen them. So it helps to give them a little more success for later math activities and other things that they may come across in school. So that is sensorial at Northstar Montessori Preschool."