PREPARED PATHS TO CULTURE
"There is nothing in the intellect
which was not first in the senses."
(Aristotle)
In this flow chart adapted from Maria
Montessori, Her Life and Work by E. M. Standing, Maria
illustrates how every educational subject has a foundation
in the senses. Each of the Montessori Sensorial exercises
makes use of materials that are designed with a specific
order inherent within. The gradations are very precise and
very balanced. As the child works with the materials he
becomes absorbed in the order of the relationships of the
parts to the whole. As the child moves on to the more
advanced Montessori didactic (or teaching) materials he
naturally radiates out from the purely Sensorial activities
to more abstract levels.
For example, when you teach the MM
(Montessori Method) Math operations with the Bank Game using
the Golden Beads material you are teaching the operations of
addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division with
CONCRETE "solid" 3-dimensional materials. When the Bank Game
is mastered the next step is to teach the Stamp Game, which
uses "surface" 2-dimensional materials (flat tiles) to
teach the same concept. The final act of ABSTRACTION is to
write the problem down on paper with the 1-dimensional
"point" of a pencil, without the physical helps from the
"hands-on" manipulatives.
