Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Making Montessori Materials - Part II

Sensory experiences are critical to developing children, especially in their younger years. According to Maria Montessori, among these sensory experiences are not only smell (olfactory), sight (visual), touch (tactile), taste (gustatory), and hearing (auditory), but also weight (baric), temperature (thermic), muscular awareness of shape (stereognostic), and colour (chromatic). Today, Jaguar and I utilized Montessori scent bottles to flex his sense of smell and ability to match common aromas. I could have bought an expensive Montessori set, but I decided it would be easy to make on my own. I saved 8 baby food jars from Bobcat and filled them with 4 different spices: parsley, oregano, basil, and nutmeg. I then made a blindfold for Jaguar to wear while he matched each smell with only his nose and his hands manipulating each jar. He had fun doing this, and once he properly matched everything, we took off the blindfold and rematched the smell with his ability to see what he was smelling, and we also named each spice so he knew exactly what he was sensing.





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