Montessori Education: The Nine Senses

Posted May 1, 2018

In Blog, Montessori School in Guelph, Montessori tips for Parents

In Montessori education, one of the main features is using all of the senses in an educational environment. By creating situations where children learn using more than one sense, they are able to remain engaged and retain their learning.

Visual Discrimination

Visual discrimination teaches children to differentiate between forms, colours and sizes. Learning to differentiate helps children to sort and it’s taught through objects that can be “sorted” or interacted with in different ways.

Tactile

Touch is a huge part of Montessori learning. In the classroom, we make as many tactile options available to children as possible, and encourage them to communicate what the object feels like: soft, scratchy, smooth, bumpy and more.

Stereognostic

We teach children to identify an object without sight, smell or sound. By removing these options for learning, it strengthens others. We often do this in the classroom by placing an object in a cloth bag and they feel it with their hands to determine what it is.

Baric

Similar to touching an object, baric learning helps children to tell the difference in weight between one object and another. We use weighted objects varying in size, shape and colour but encouraging the children to focus on the weight of the objects.

Thermal

Teaching children about the difference in temperature doesn’t just teach them about the world around them, but about safety as well. You can teach them about temperature as the seasons change with the clothing they wear or installing an outdoor thermometer so they can begin to connect what they feel with a number.

Olfactory

Your children can develop their sense of smell by sorting and matching objects based on the strength of the smell. We teach the vocabulary associated with the smells as well as comparing between strong and faint smells. You can incorporate this into everyday activities like cooking and gardening!

Gustatory

Much like olfactory learning, gustatory learning develops the taste buds with trying, testing and sorting various tastes. Mealtimes can become learning experiences and can help your children develop wide-ranging palettes and a varied diet.

Chromatic

In Montessori education, we teach children both how to tell different colours apart and how to differentiate between variations in colour. Children learn how much white or black a colour has and learn how to describe colours.

Proprioception

The unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself. An example of proprioception would be our ability to close our eyes and touch our left index finger to our right eyebrow.

A Montessori education can benefit your children in all of these ways and more. Contact us today to learn how you can start your child on the path to a Montessori education in Guelph.

Alternative Schools Guelph, CCMA Accredited Montessori Schools, Montessori Schools Guelph Ontario

Glynis Hamilton

I am Glynis Hamilton, the owner of the Montessori School of Wellington. When I had my children I knew exactly what I wanted for them in terms of early childhood education. It was only when I visited a beautiful Montessori school in Toronto that I knew I had found what I was looking for. I became intrigued by Montessori and so, at the ripe old age of 44, I went back to school and then switched career from legal secretary to Montessori teacher. Since that time, Montessori has become a way of life for me. The past 20 years have been a joy rather than a job. I have moved from being front line in the classroom to the office doing more administrative work. But, my office door is almost always open to the classroom where I can hear the children’s laughter and welcome them in for a visit. I truly love what I do.