This is sensorial at Northstar Montessori Preschool. In sensorial everything is a lead-in
to math, so when you see the red rods, which are just a solid color, they're a lead-in
to the red and blue rods that you'll find in math. The only difference is that in math
they have delineations so you can determine the actual number of each section. Sensorial
has to do with all the different senses so we may do activities to do with sight, sound,
taste, all the way through. This is an obvious lead-in to math, these are called the geometric
solids. What we do with these is we teach them the names of them so that they know that
when they, later in math when they have to figure out the volume of something, that an
ellipsoid, has two equal ends. They know they've held it in their hand, they've seen it with
their eyes, so they know that what the shape is, and it's much easier for them in later
math, to figure out exactly what it is when they've seen it. When it's drawn on paper
it's much more abstract, so this just gives it a little more of a concrete feeling for
children once they've seen them. So it helps to give them a little more success for later
math activities and other things that they may come across in school. So that is sensorial
at Northstar Montessori Preschool.