On our teacher work day before coming back from break, I offered to re-organize and refresh our Sensorial Area. Earlier in the winter break I had already done Practical Life, see the post here, Practical Life Shelves, so I had time to try out Sensorial. Here's the first shelf:
Cabinet One: (left to right, top to bottom)
The shelf to the left holds the Pink Cubes with pink felt and a special pink box for the smallest cube
Top Shelf: Marbles for the Brown Prisms, a crown for walking the line and head phones for distracted children.
Shelf One: The Knobbed Cylinders with colored stickers corresponding to the boxes (not sure how I feel about this)
Shelf Two: Brown Prisms and Colored Knobbless Cylinders in RYGB order (stop light with a police car following)
Shelf Three: Red Rods with cards for different colored cylinder designs
Cabinet Two:
Top Shelf: color plastic to experiment seeing the world in another color, small circles of colors with names on back, mixing cylinders with colored oil and water, books on colors.
Shelf one: Primary color tablets, Secondary Color Tablets, papers to color in Color Tablets- Grading Color Tablets- Shade Matching with pegs
Shelf two: Sound Cylinders- Texture Board- Texture Tablets- Fabric Matching- Thermic Tablets- Baric Tablets
Shelf three: Color and Shape Matching work
Cabinet Three:
Top Shelf: Geometric Solids with bases and blindfold
Shelf one: Constructive Triangles (triangle and hexagon)- Monomial Cube- Binomial Cube- Trinomial Cube
Shelf two: Snowflake Making Work (see below)- Geometric Cabinet and cards
Shelf three: Triangles, Squares and Circle in different sizes/colors- Form matching board (big hit with my 3 year old boys)
The small shelf on the right holds a snowman puzzle, peg board with rubber bands and graph board to match shape and color
The Sensorial Area did not get much use in the October- December part of the year, but with this new sprucing up children are seeming to be interested again. The Snowflake work is something I found on one of my favorite Montessori sites on this post... Snowflake Idea. It's great for turn taking and pre-reading practice.
We are currently working out the kinks in the Smelling Cylinders, but the children are very interested in that work as well. The Sensorial Area is so vital to Montessori's philosophy and it was fun to stretch my thinking in that area.
Have you found a wonderful Sensorial work kids love? Ideas about my sequencing? Please share your thoughts!
