Sensorial
Children interact with the physical world through their senses. The Sensorial curriculum is designed to help the child to focus his/her attention more carefully on the physical world, exploring with each of his/her senses the subtle variations in the properties of objects.
Each material isolates one concept for the child to discover such as height, width, aroma, taste, weight, texture, temperature, shades of color and sound. Each exercise has a built in ‘control of error’ that allows the observant child to check and correct his/her own work. Problems are solved independently without unnecessary adult intervention. This builds the child’s self-confidence, critical thinking skills and gives the satisfaction that only comes from accomplishment.
The sensorial materials provide “materialized abstractions” that are the groundwork for the concepts of number and numeral. The sensorial area gives the child a perceptual idea of basic mathematics. It is indirect preparation for the language (sound discrimination, visual perception, eye-hand coordination) and the cultural areas (awareness of classification).
