Montessori education is unique because we encourage children to learn through sensorial exploration and using materials that engage hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, and cognitive skills. The Baric Tablets are a hands-on starting material emphasizing a sensory skill that we often take for granted: weight discrimination.
Teachers present students with a set of three tablets to start the work. These tablets look similar to the eye and are uniform in texture, size, and shape. The teachers explain that each tablet has a different weight and ask students to arrange the tablets from lightest to heaviest.
Children complete the Baric Tablet lesson independently, fostering a sense of accomplishment and self-confidence through this independent exploration. Students refine their senses and tactile skills as they feel, decide, and sort the tablets.
In other lessons, children may be blindfolded to focus purely on the sense of touch and match tablets of the same weight without visual cues. After the child is familiar with the material, teachers introduce exciting games and challenges to make the activity more engaging, like finding pairs of tablets that weigh the same.
The Importance of the Baric Tablets
Baric tablets are essential for sensory development and help our students grow and trust their tactile senses. Handling the tablets and noticing and comparing subtle differences in weight enhances children's sensory discrimination skills. Sorting and comparing these tablets requires focus and concentration, two bedrock skills for critical thinking.
Manipulating the tablets also helps develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Categorizing and ordering the tablets by weight improves the child's ability to analyze and make decisions based on the data gathering. Understanding differences in weight also lays a foundation for more complex concepts in mathematics and science, including measurement and density.
The Montessori in a Minute Series
The Montessori In A Minute series regularly explores the unique benefits of Montessori philosophy, its fundamental materials, and areas of the classroom. For all parents at Hudson Montessori School (Jersey City, New Jersey), the school hosts Parent Education Nights every year to teach parents about the Montessori method and how the students learn curriculum components using a Montessori framework.
Contact us to learn more about Hudson Montessori School's theme-based learning approach to education, the Montessori philosophy and methodology, or how the school fosters the love of learning for children aged 2 to eighth grade.
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