Sensorial

Building the imagination with the real     
 
Children live in a world of senses. In order to continue their creative task, children need to highlight impressions they have already received. Through sight, touch, taste and smell, the sensorial materials 'throw a spotlight' on reality. For example, the concepts of longness and shortness are derived from the red rods of varying lengths. Because they rods are rendered in unit lengths from one to ten, they also provide a basis for mathmatical gradation. Another example, roughness and smoothness are experienced by touching rough sandpaper and smooth polished wood. Later these lessons are repeated with the sandpaper globe helping the child distinguish between land (sandpaper) and water (smooth). Sensorial materials are used for clarification of large, small, heavy, thick and thin; loud and soft; high and low; hot and cold; colors; tastes; smells; and for plane and solid geometric forms. The sensorial material is really a key to the world and is the basis for abstraction.