“The human hand, so delicate and so complicated, not only allows the mind to reveal itself but it enables the whole being to enter into special relationships with its environment. We might even say that man “takes possession of his environment with his hands”. Maria Montessori
The area of Sensorial Development is based on developing and refining the senses which is one of the pillars of the Montessori method; to learn and absorb the world through the senses. Therefore, in the Montessori method we consider not only the 5 typical senses but 9 in total;
olfactory, the sense of smell;
tactile, the sense of touch;
auditory, the sense of hearing;
gustatory, the sense of taste;
thermic, the sense of temperature;
baric, the sense of weight;
kinesthetic, the sense of muscle or body awareness;
visual, the sense of sight including, form, dimension and chromatic – the sense of color
sterognostic, or tactile gnosis, the sense of touch without sight
When the environment is prepared with a variety of sensorial materials and exercises (which holistically develop all the possible human senses), the child becomes fully prepared to move on to the stage of learning and absorbing mathematical and language concepts.
