Senses: The body’s information and observation gathering system

"Education is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment." - Maria Montessori
 
Montessori believed that Child is a `Sensorial Explorer’ and through the child’s senses he understands the world. Sensorial experiences are the first steps in organizing his intelligence and adapting to the environment. Through these sensorial experiences the child develops:

A Keener eye – visual
A Keener ear - auditory
A Keener sense of smell – olfactory
A Keener sense of taste – gustatory
A Keener sense of touch and feeling - tactile
 
In this unit, it was our attempt to develop the five senses. We started off with the auditory sense. We played the silence game and experienced different kinds of sounds with various musical instruments. As a practice we are doing silence circle every day in the morning. We read a lot of books so children understand the difference between loud outside noise and soft inside voice.

For visual we did a spaghetti art with different colors. We even used toy cars and let the children roll the car wheels on a splash of colors. Children had fun making those tracks and seeing what happens when the colors mix.  

For touch we had the rough and smooth boards lesson available. We also had other extensions available for rough and smooth surfaces like shells and textile.

For the sense of smell, we had smelling bottles on the shelf.

​Last but not least for taste we had four kinds of fundamental taste available for children. We also ended the unit by celebrating Chinese New Year and Valentines, which allowed children to taste different kinds of food and see different colors with different crafts.

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