Our senses – taste, smell, touch, hearing, and sight – are the key way that we perceive the world. Kids instinctively know this, but Montessori-based learning helps kids to understand their senses, and how to interpret them. We use these throughout our preschool programs from Fremont to Milpitas, Hercules to San Carlos, Dublin to Irvington and everywhere between
Cognitive and language skills develop through the use of repetition and the interaction of children with their senses, environment, and surroundings, which all should start as early as possible in a systematic way. Teaching your kids to “label” each sense, and the words associated with the five senses not only encourages brain development and critical thinking, but also builds vocabulary through sensory play. Here are some at-home tips and ideas you can use to help your child really understand what’s going on with his or her senses.
Smell – Olfactory Sensory
We smell through the olfactory system, which can warn of dangerous situations or, because of a learned association of scents that were pleasant in the past, queue us with feelings of affection. That smell of warm apple pie might remind you of Grandma. That smell of a flower, might remind you of a first love. Teach your kids to pay attention to their sense of smell.
Here’s an activity: Smelling Bottles. These are awesome to have your children guess scents. To replicate this at home you should utilize candles, flowers, kitchen ingredients similares, even lavender.
To set it up, you have to present every perfume one by one with some distance between each. To start, model the activity for your child by picking up each item, smelling it, and labeling the scent. When it is your kid’s time, invite him or her to smell the bottle as you say its name together, like ‘lemon’ or ‘lavender.” This helps the child to understand what smell is, and builds cognitive and language skills.
Sight – Visual Sensory
Children slowly become aware of colors, patterns, brightness, and motions and visual play strengthens sight and vision. These skills are critical to key educational actions such as reading. Color sorting activity is a fun, hands-on sight exercise that teaches kids about color identification and sorting. You can ask your child to either sort their toys by color into groups or group a variety of household items into colors.
At our campuses, we even use these activities outdoors. For example, when the weather is better, we’ll examine green leaves, yellow flowers, and brown mud. The world around us is our laboratory in Fremont, Dublin, Milpitas and our other campus locations.
Taste – Gustatory Sensory
Taste creates our eating patterns and food preferences. This sensory process enables children to identify and distinguish different flavors when children eat. Children have the opportunity to experience tasting different flavors in a safe and controlled manner, so sampling allows them to explore tastes at a tasting bottle prepared with a variety of flavors. Our young learners can join this taste test adventure too with the guidance of a teacher or a parent at home. Start with basic tastes like sweet, sour, and salty flavor profiles. There are multiple examples in each position — use lemon juice for sour or mango juice for sweet. Your kitchen is your laboratory – have fun with this tasty exercise!
Hearing – Auditory Sensory
Some ear training habits, for example, help a person sharpen their pitch, volume and rhythm perception together. Identifying sounds is an essential building block of a child’s learning. This skill is useful for overcoming confusing similar sounding words, such as ‘kitchen’ and ‘chicken’. An entertaining approach to working on auditory skills is with Sound Cylinders; two sets of tubes that are usually painted red and blue. Kids will shake a tube and match it with another tube that matches its sound.
“Sound matches” are a simplified version of the sound interpretation and detection activity. Take some old, small jars or containers that you can find and fill them with rice, beans, or little pebbles. Your child can shake all the containers and find the matching sounds. This exercise will help develop careful listening, and auditory recognition.
Touch – Tactile Sensory
Tactile sensory play creates neural pathways in the brain and is important for providing the child with the tools to successfully process the world around them. As they learn to develop this skill, it also helps fine motor skill coordination. The Montessori method helps kids learn to write, type, and do other hand/eye actions through activities that focus on fine motor skills. Touch is a key element.
Here’s an exercise: “Fabric Boxes.” Fabric Boxes consist of fabric squares with various textures to aid in your child developing their sense of touch. This fun classroom activity can be done at home using some of the fabrics you already have on hand. Collect several textured materials, tuck them inside a box, and then do a blind test. The child touches the item with his or her eyes closed, and guesses as to what it is. With this activity, they will improve their senses, and fine motor skills.
Worksheets are some of the most intriguing sensorial activities for kids to have fun with as the mean of playing-to-learn and learning-to-play, which have a great importance in Pre-K education. These activities allows kids to sharpen their senses, enhance cognitive functions, and prepare young ones for the future for learning. Such practical experiences cultivate curiosity and self-reliance. Through sensory experience, early learners have a better comprehension of their surroundings, which makes the learning process much more fun and meaningful.
Our goal as educators is always collaborative – to work with each student, and with parents or guardians. If you want to see our strategy in action, book a school tour, especially at our newer campuses such as San Carlos or Hercules.
