The Montessori Encyclopedia blog posts are an opportunity for parents and individuals to see what the children interact with in the Montessori environment and to better understand the purpose of the materials or activities – which at first glance, may not be obvious!
In the Montessori Children’s House classroom, we have two sets of cylinder materials in the sensorial area of our classroom: the knobbed cylinders and the knobless cylinders. You can think of them as “puzzles”. These materials encourage the development of visual discrimination skills as well as their sense of touch, but also serve more indirect purposes, as you will see!
Knobbed Cylinder Blocks
The knobbed cylinders are a set of four blocks with ten inset cylinders. The first block has cylinders that vary in both height and diameter (the tallest cylinder has the widest diameter); the second block varies in diameter only; the third block varies in height and diameter (the tallest cylinder has the thinnest diameter); and the fourth block varies in height.
When a child first uses this material, they will begin with the largest cylinder, pinch the knob between their thumb and two forefingers, pull it out of its correct spot, and place it in front of the block. The child will then remove all the pieces, one-by-one, feeling the size of the cylinder and then feeling the hole from which it was removed, and replacing them, one-by-one, starting with the largest piece and moving to the smallest.
Once the child is familiar with the material, we would then mix the pieces up and the child would use visual or tactile discrimination skills to fit the correct cylinder into the appropriately sized hole in the cylinder block. Eventually, the child will work with two cylinder blocks at a time, then three, and then four.
The handling of these cylinders requires the use of the pincer grasp, which is such an important grasp for a child to develop, as they will need it to manipulate a pencil and write
words. Montessori says that “Throughout all the sensory experience the hand . . . was preparing its own future . . . when it took the cylinders of the solid insets and placed them in their apertures.”
The child also works with the cylinder blocks by moving from left to right, which prepares them for reading and writing in the English language (from left to right). They also lay a foundation for the mathematical concept of the base-ten number system.
Knobless Cylinders
The knobless cylinders come in four sets of ten cylinders. The first set is red in color, and each cylinder decreases in diameter. The yellow set decreases in both diameter and height. The green set decreases in diameter and increases in height. The blue set decreases in height. Like the knobbed cylinders, this material is designed to help support a child’s visual discrimination skills. Since these cylinders also stack on top of one another, the child develops sequencing skills, dexterity and precision – all of which require the ability of the child to concentrate. As children use this material, they come to understand language such as short, shorter and shortest; tall, taller and tallest; thin, thinner and thinnest; thick, thicker and thickest.
The sensorial materials are simple objects but are ones that are scientifically developed to best support a child’s development and learning, but they also support an inner development, said Dr. Montessori, of the child’s ability to observe, make comparisons, form judgments, reason & decide. Montessori says it is the “indefinite repetition of this exercise of attention and of intelligence that a real development ensues”.
These materials lay a foundation for later work in mathematics and language.
When a child first uses these materials, they will put the cylinders in order from largest diameter to smallest diameter. They will then move the cylinders into a random order before replacing them. They also enjoy many wonderful extensions, such as putting a blindfold on and ordering them by touch. They will combine the four sets of cylinders, build graded towers, and enjoy combining the knobbed cylinder set with the knobless cylinder set!
