Dr Montessori believed that sensorial education in the classroom is extremely important.  She said that sensorial education was not the same as sensorial impressions, that anyone can receive a number of sensorial impressions and be “none the wiser”.  Some people can walk in a park and never hear the sounds of the birds or notice the shape and colour of the trees, or the beauty around them.  By educating the senses, it means a child is helped to understand what he sees and hears, etc.

We build a knowledge and understanding of the world through our senses.  Maria Montessori designed materials that stimulate and educate the senses.  The aim of sensorial education is to put the child in contact with his environment through the isolation of his senses.  Sensorial exercises are provided to develop and refine the child’s senses and to broaden his awareness of the environment around him. 

Exercises are provided for everything that can be perceived by each of the human body’s senses:

-  Visual sense (this perceives size, shape, composition and pattern)
-   Chromatic Sense (this perceives colour)
-   Olfactory Sense (this perceives scents and odours)
-   Gustatory Sense (this perceives taste)
-   Auditory Sense (this perceives loudness and pitch)
-   Tactile Sense (this perceives texture)
-   Baric Sense (this perceives weight)
-   Thermic sense (this perceives temperature)
-   Stereognostic sense (this perceives form, through tactile and muscular impression/memory combined with movement)