Sensorial Materials

Sensorial materials are largely designed for the child in the first age of life (0-6 years). These materials mediate the child’s motor-sensory differentiation and integration. Differentiation helps a particular sense to expand its scope and depth, such as “seeing” a larger range of colors or hearing a deeper range of sounds. At minimum this involves neural developments that help to sort out all of the neural inputs from a particular sensory organ. As well, the organ itself may be growing and developing in its range and depth. Integration then involves the associative parts of the brain that allows for various motor and sensory parts of the body and brain to become linked to each other. In both differentiation and integration, a refinement of sensory perceptions and memories emerges and habitualizes, increasing the child’s liberty to operate with greater self-control and nuance in the child’s immediate world.

As children develop with an innate finality for adulthood, one of the key needs is to develop the organs and vessels by which all human beings engage the world and each other. These organs are the doorways both into their souls and the windows back out into the world. The child in the first stages of life is not primarily concerned with getting things done in the world but rather the child is being taught by the inner teacher to participate in his or her creation through self-adaptation in relationship to the world. Adults need to give the children space and time for this inner creation to unfold. Many times, we become impatient with the rate of their movements and activities. They might stroll down a sidewalk looking at each blade of grass or tracing an ant passing between their feet. Or they might put away a set of toys only to begin taking these out again. This is because they do not inhabit the adult world, a world whose aim is to gets things done (at least in the modern world of the West). So, even though they are constituted by a finality toward adulthood, children are still far from operating as adults operate. They sometimes spend hours on activities and repetition of activities that seem useless to many adults. This is because the child’s world is really centered around their own interior coming-to-be in relationship to the immediate world of their bodies and senses.

In gaining insights into this interior development of the child, Montessori discovered a number of ways that she could help mediate that development, especially with those inner developments that are more difficult and challenging to children. In some cases, she found materials already in use for special needs, such as the pink tower. In other cases, she created new materials. In all cases, she figured out how to adapt and present these to children, and build these into their “world” or environment so that the child could return to these materials as often as they needed to do so. As she developed these materials, a few common characteristics became clear, common features which Phyllis Wallbank summarizes below.

Each piece of material contains a control of error, e.g. in the cylinder blocks, if he makes a mistake in placing the cylinders back, one cylinder will disappear into a hole which is too deep and another will project from a hole that is too small.
The objects are attractive. They have color brightness and harmony of form.
Each demands activity from the child.
The material is limited in quantity. There is only one example of the same piece of apparatus. Children learn to wait their turn and fit into the community.
The child has the possibility of repetition in order to gain control and to become really familiar with the material.
Each piece of material acts as an indirect preparation for a more advanced activity.
Each stimulates the child to precise language so that he can express ideas about the knowledge gained.
The sensorial material in a Montessori school is designed to fulfil a need and, as each piece of apparatus has a purpose, misuse is not allowed. There is however, scope for creativity within much of the material.

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