Children love to construct, and to de-construct. This is part of the imaginary play in which every child engages. In a Montessori classroom, the building materials are specially-designed to promote future success in math and reading.
The blocks and cylinders are built at proportional increments. A child working with these materials will intrinsically become acquainted with gradation and proportion–all at the same time as they are having fun with our colorful, wooden pieces.
Two development processes are implicit in these tangible activities. There is visual discrimination–training the young eyes to differentiate between similar objects. Visual discrimination is an important precursor to reading. Manipulating objects like these also promotes concept development as the growing brain becomes more organized in its object-recognition and thinking through what it is observing.
