Montessori Sensorial Activities using the Knobless Cylinders

Vito is 32 months old.

The main purpose of sensorial activities in Montessori is to help the child sort out the many and varied impressions given the senses.  The sensorial materials that you mostly see are designed to help the child develop discrimination, order and to broaden and refine the senses. 

Knobless Cylinders are sensorial materials that are used for visual discrimination of dimension, width, length and size.  Vito love these cylinders! We are using this every morning and he can’t seem to get enough of it!

The Knobless Cylinders come in 4 coloured boxes:  the blue, red, yellow and green cylinders and all has 10 cylinders each.

RED CYLINDERS.  The red cylinders are equal in height but varies in diameter.  I took them out from the box and arranged them in a linear manner as seen on the left picture.  I showed Vito that the red cylinders is getting bigger as it moves on his right.  He later on formed the cylinders into a pyramid and I am impressed as to how he’s able to do it with less assistance from me.  He can easily tell which one is bigger than the other! 

BLUE CYLINDERS.  The blue cylinders are equal in diameter but vary in heights.  Vito loves this and call this as the stairs!  I presented this in a similar manner as that of the red cylinders but mentioned that the blue cylinders grows bigger or taller as it goes to his right.

YELLOW CYLINDERS.  The yellow cylinders, decrease in height and diameter. Now this is one of Vito’s favourite set (second to red). He loves this and the red set because he can form them into a beautiful pyramid.  I also bought this printable pattern sheets from Montessori Print Shop so we can work around on some patterns using the cylinders.

GREEN CYLINDERS.  The cylinders here increase in height but decrease in diameter. 

The knobless cylinders can sharpen the child’s visual discrimination of graduation of sizes in a series. Although for now, Vito is all matching and identifying which is bigger or smaller, later on we’ll delve into a much deeper understanding of graded sizes through comparisons of sizes in a series. This material also helps the child enhance his fine motor skills and concentration through stacking and patterning activities.

EXTENSIONS. There are so many ways to extend knobless cylinder activities.  Right now, we’re working on patterning using the ones from Montessori Print Shop.  We’re following the patterns directly but I’d like Vito to create the patterns themselves in the future (use the printed material as a guide).  Hopefully, he’ll be able to come up with some other ways he can work with more than one colour box at a time, like the ones seen below.

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This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool. 

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