The purpose of the Montessori Sensorial curriculum is to teach the child how to explore the world around him, in order to better appreciate it. Activities are designed to isolate one sense at a time, to refine it, so that the child can discern the slightest differences. Touch activities teach the child to identify, match, and grade textures, using only his sensitized fingers.
Identification of Rough and Smooth
Touch Board 1 is a wooden board with two square sections. One square is made of a coarse sandpaper. The other square is made of a smooth material. The child is shown how to sensitize her fingers, either by vigorous rubbing on the carpet or by dipping her fingertips into tepid water. She then strokes the rough side of the board as the teacher says, “This is rough.” The process is repeated on the other side as the teachers says, “This is smooth.”
Touch Board 2 is a wooden board with six alternating strips of the rough and smooth materials used in Touch Board 1. The child uses the same process of sensitizing her fingers, then running them along the strips as they are named for her. She also practices naming them herself.
Once the child can discern between rough and smooth, she is free to move around her environment to discover rough and smooth items. She can bring small items back to her rug to sort under the rough and smooth sections. She can label other items in the environment with the words “rough” and “smooth”. Or perhaps the directress will set up a basket of items to be sorted by rough and smooth textures.
Matching Textures
The Touch Tablets are a set of wooden rectangles, each covered with a different grade of sandpaper. There are ten in total, with five matching pairs. When the child is introduced to the Touch Tablets, he must first sensitize his fingers. Then, with his eyes closed or blindfolded, he matches identical textures, strictly by using the sense of touch.
This activity can also be done using a basket of various fabrics, such as wool, cotton, silk, etc., each one with a matching counterpart. Puzzles are available in which the child has to feel the bottom of a cylinder and match it to a base.
Grading Textures
Touch Board 3 is designed similarly to Touch Board 2, except it has sandpaper gradually increasing in coarseness from smoothest to roughest. The child sensitizes her fingers and as she moves across the board, the extremes and varying degrees are named: “roughest, smoother, smoother, smoother, smoothest” or “smoothest, rougher, rougher, rougher, roughest”.
The Touch Tablets can then be used to practice grading. Take out one of each grade of tablet and try to put them in order. Identify the roughest and the smoothest and say, “I am going to grade these from roughest to smoothest.” Choose two similar textures at a time to compare, placing the appropriate one in line.
The Touch Tablets can also be somewhat matched to Touch Board 3, as a control of error. The child can choose objects in the environment to grade from roughest to smoothest.
Specially designed Montessori materials will initially teach the child the concepts of rough and smooth, how to match textures, and how to grade textures from roughest to smoothest. He can then apply these principles to the world around him as he explores and observes his environment.
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