Will you be my Valentine?

Yes, it's Valentine's. And I have been so un-organised!! I haven't been able to get motivated and to ne honest, when I went looking for little hearts and items like this for our Practical Life exercises, I simply couldn't find anything!! What a shame.. If I had given myself enought time, I probably would have found enough gadgets.... Never mind!! I'll make it up for Patrick's Day!!!

However, the children have been working on a little Valentine offering for their mam or Dad (or both).. I basically reproduced the activity we did last year (you can see right here).

Instead of using chick peas, I decided to use some wooden coloured beads. The children couldn't use them for lacing activites as they were badly shaped. So they were there, in the cupboard and I thought it would be a nice way to recycle them.

 

Now, the plan is for us to paint them in red. I couldn't make up my mind so I let the children decide. So here are the 2 final versions of the craft.

 

If you don't have any wooden beads or chick peas, why not using coffee beans? We ran out of beads and my assistant Rachel came up with this rescue solution!! Not bad, hey? (sorry I don't have a photo of the painted version!)



Unispiring geometric solids? Not anymore!!

I must admit that our Geometric Solids have been rarely used in our classroom, probably because it didn't inspire the children.  The children have been introduced to the names of each solids but this is not a popular activity. I had been thinking about extending the exercise but never gor around it until I finally got onto   Montessori for Everyone and downloaded a set of matching cards to be used in conjunction with the geometric solids.  The set of cards depicts each of the Geometric Solids with several corresponding photos for each shape. The photos represent objects in the child’s environment/community. I made a set of 10 labelled geometric solid cards to be placed under each solid and a set of 30 picture cards for sorting. I placed them all in a basket, right beside the geometric solids on our sensorial shelves. The child will be asked to first match the geometric solid cards to the solids. Then, he picks the set of picture cards and places each one of them under their corresponding solid.

Picture borrows from Montessori Albums

The first thing I do is to bring a child to the sensorial shelves and tell him/her that I am going to show him/her how to work with a new piece of material.

1.   I use the work cycle to present the exercise
2. At the start of the lesson, we first place the solids horizontally from left to right on the top of the mat.  I then re-introduce the names of the solids. As I go over each name, I point at the name labelled on the cards.  
3.  I introduce the matching Geometric Solid cards and show the child how to match them to the solids.
4. 
   

   
   

   Once the child is successful with the first set of cards, I then invite her to sort the remaining picture cards underneath.  Everytimethe child places a card underneath a solid card,   I ask her/him why she/he does so, enticing her/him to think about the shape and its characteristics. Once child placed the tent under the rectangular prism and when asked why, he said: “well, it has a rectangle shape here and a triangle shape here. And I have slept in a tent before with my Mam and Dad, so I know”.  This comment spurred a flow of other comments from the children who eagerly shared their own experience.



Once the exercise is completed, I show the child how she could turn the cards around and check for herself if her work was correct. Each card is colour-coded for control of error. I then show her how to tidy up the picture cards first from left to right, row by row. Then we pick up the labelled geometric cards from left to right. We place all the cards back in their basket. We then pick up all the solids from left to right and place them all in their basket. Both baskets are then returned to the sensorial shelves.  

I have to admit, this is not a table top activity and I should have presented the exercise on the floor. There is always room for improvement!!! All in all though, I found this activity absolutely brilliant for several reasons:

• During one of my many  presentations, many children gathered up around Millie ( 4 years old) and myself. I was surprised with the visual impact the cards created once they were all laid out with the Geometric Solids.  In fact, throughout the lesson, several children in the classroom came to see what the "new work" was and I heard more remark, "Oooh, what's that?  I want to do that!"  It was heartening to see a new interest develop in the Geometric Solids sparked by this set.
• Children may make several observations about this work. This activity was brilliant to begin discussions.  First of all, the children realised quickly that certain shapes are much more likely to occur in nature (ellipsoids) while others are much more likely to occur in human made construction (pyramids). And the ones made by men are much harder to find than the others. It was wonderful to see the children speculate as to why that is, and brainstorm about other examples of each of these types of solids.
•  The children’s range of vocabulary as we revised the names of all the solids and compared them to their day-to-day usage. For instance, people commonly refer to any structure that starts broadly and ends narrowly as a pyramid (a child’s tower of blocks, for example).
• The children know to spot the differences between a square-based pyramid and a triangular pyramid. It got the children to look at the details of each shape more carefully by comparing and matching. So if you want to stimulates your children’s awareness of geometric shapes, this is the way to go!
• The activity  introduces them to mathematical concepts (geometry)
• And believe it or not, but the whole exercise indirectly introduces children to art appreciation as they learn about the specific characteristics of each solid.
  

Ok... as I am studying like mad at the moment for my Montessori Degree, I decided to link this activity to theory. So, you may want to quit the reading of this post right here as it is going to get a bit "boring" for some of you!!! But believe me, it is a great practising exercise for me. So just bear with me!!

"Teachers in general are continually looking for ways to guide students’ understanding of mathematical concepts. Contemporary research has demonstrated that pre-schoolers need opportunities to explore their world and experience mathematics. There are 3  fundamental mathematical concepts that form the building blocks of mathematical and scientific knowledge: matching, classification, order & seriation.  The development of these concepts allows the children to organize and categorize information so that when they start formal schooling, they begin to apply fundamental concepts by exploring ideas both in maths and science (Charlesworth and Lind, 1999). The constructivist paradigm based on Piaget’s (1955) theory of cognitive development has long provided a framework for  educational practices in which children gain concepts trough involvement with the environment and construct their knowledge as they explore their surroundings. This means using manipulative materials that enable children to engage in active learning. Using pictures of objects that can be found in the children’s everyday life gives them the right experience in assessing the different characteristics of the solids and help the children to place them in their environment.

Also, having a print rich, or literacy rich environment is an important aspect of a child’s literacy education. According to one study, exposure to written language helps children develop a number of things including: awareness of print, phonemic awareness, letter naming, listening comprehension and eventually word reading. (Gunn, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995, 3). Marie Clay (Teale & Sulzby, 1986) was the first person to introduce the term emergent literacy to describe the behaviors used by young children with books and printed words, even though the children could not actually read and write in the conventional sense. Mary Clay suggests that literacy development begins way before children start formal instruction in elementary school (Teale & Sulzby, 1986). Children have been found to learn about written language as they actively engage with adults in reading and writing situations; as they explore print on their own; and as they observe others around them engaged in literacy activities (Teale & Sulzby, 1986). For example, when hearing me say the word “ellipsoid” a few times and pointing at the printed word at the same time, the children are not just memorizing the word, but actually learning that printed words carry a meaning. And this is why labelling is very important. In a Montessori environment,  we use lots of nomenclatures and 3 part-cards with words printed on the cards. Just like in this activity. Repetition will provide experience for the children and help them associate the printed word with its meaning or what it represents."

 I hope I make sense!

What's on your fingertips?

Last week, the children discovered a new sensorial material on our shelves: the Baric Tablets. I have hummed and hawed for quite a while before buying the set. I considered making my own set but to be quite honest, I have so much on my plate at the moment but my 2 trainings... I got lazy and went for the easiest option.. Praying I wouldn't regret my investment. Once again, I shouldn't have doubted Montessori. What worked for her years ago still apply to the 21st century kid (to some extent, of course!)

For this activity, we use three boxes containing three sets of wooden tablets made from different types of timber (beech, oak, mahogany). There is a difference of approximately 6 grams between each tablets. And don't forget the blindfold (kids LOVE it. I think it makes the exercise more exiting!). The Baric Tablets are to stimulate the child's awareness in differences in weight and refine his senses. The idea is that the child closes his eyes to focus his attention on the weight rather than the color of the wooden tablets. When he opens his eye, the child can check whether or not he has sorted the tablets correctly by weight by looking at the different colors of these three types of timber.

When I put the tablets on the shelves, as you can imagine, children were queueing to see what the new exercise was. They all wanted to have a go at it first and it took a while before the children agreed to take turns and to let Tom go first. I stepped back and let them solve the problem themselves. I was so proud of them for sorting it out all on their own without my intervention! I followed our usual  Montessori work cycle and  picked the 2 most contrasting tablets (the lightest and the heaviest). I closed the box and placed it on the top right corner of the table,his hands up and his fingers bent and spread. I placed one tablet on each hand and asked Tom which one was the lightest and which one was the heaviest. I showed him how to make a tower with the heaviest tablets and another with the lightest. 

(Again, my pics are turning sideways!! Thought they are the right way in my picture folder on my computer!! Anybody there who knows how to rotate pics when writing a post?)

Once Tom has mastered one type of contrasting tablets (lighter/heavier), he can move to another set (Lighter/medium or heavier/medium). Finally, as the children progress, they can use the 3 sets together and pile the tablets into 3 towers as they categorize them into light, medium and heavy.

Needless to say that the exercise was very popular!! Children love diversity and this material concentrates on one sense they had never been aske to work with. It is different and it is challenging.  So, investing in the Baric tablets was definitely a good move for our classroom. No regret here!!

At home, you can easily recreate this activity by using any objects you can find which will introduce the concept of heavy and light to your child : wooden blocks, rocks, feathers, marbles, etc..  Of course,  a homemade lesson might not appear as controlled as using the Montessori tablets, but you would still achieve your goal: teaching weight discrimination and refining your child's awareness of weights in his environment.

If you know of any extension to this activity, please leave a comment. See you soon!



Language activities in our classroom

A few months ago, I wrote about all the Montessori pre-language activities we have in our classroom in this post right here. As children progress, I then introduce them to more "traditional" Montessori-type language materials. When do I know when they are ready? Well, if they show interest in letters, in writing and in sounds, then I consider they are ready! And I start by introducing them to the sandpaper letters.

As I discussed in here,  we tend to introduce letters by phonetic sounds rather than by their names. We do not follow the alphabetical order.

We don't have a special set up in our classroom for literacy activities. As part of the Montessori work cycle, I let the children choose the spot of their choice for their work. To be honest, the children have realised (unconsciously) that it is handy to be placed near the language shelf, just in case they have forgotten to bring something with them to the table. Below, you can see our sandpaper letters, our phonic booklets (I will talk about it later on in this post) and my blue container where I store the children's letter and number booklets. These booklets help me to keep record of their progress as they learn sounds with their sandpaper letters (see the post on this record keeping system right here). We also have a "sand" tray for tracing each letter, usually placed on the right hand side of the sandpaper letters on the shelf. A child was using the tray when I took the pictures, so I added a seperate photo below. As you will notice, we are actually not using sand but salt (I find it less gritty and it tends to mark my table a little bit less!!).  

the top shelf of our language shelving unit

When doing a presentation with a child, I station myself  at the table with the child.  To present a sandpaper letter and its sound, we use the three-period lesson: period 1 (This is letter /a/), period 2 (Show me /a/) and period 3 (what's this sound?). As I trace the letter in its writing direction, I also say the sound of the letter, looking straight at the child. Then I invite the child to trace the letter with his index and middle finger. The child will spontaneoulsy give the sound of the letter, though he doesn't have to.

I recently made some little books for the children to practice their sounds. I printed pictures of words with the initial sounds in question. I cut them out, and made little cards that I then laminated. And finally, I bound them together and voila!! Basically, there is just a picture (or 2) on each page. The picture begins with the corresponding letter sound.  When we read it, we emphasize the beginning sound (i.e.  /mmmmm/ mop). On the front cover of each booklet, you can see the corresponding letter. I have tried to reproduce the effect of the sandpaper letters by gluing some couscous seeds all over the letter.

 

(I am sorry.. for some reason, the above photos wouldn't come out the right way!!)

Once the children have been introduced to a letter, they can refer to the above booklet. For example, if they are learning about /c/, they pick the C booklet, point at each picture on the page, saying the word loud to hear its initial sound. I found it to help the children retain the sound of the letter much easier. The more practice and the more examples you give them, the better. This also can be regarded as a pre-reading exercise as it requires the children to read from left to right. I also ask them to plac their index underneath each photo to prepare them to reading.

When we have finished a full set of 4 letters (for example /a/, /c/, /m/ and /t/), I also like the children to practice further before introducing new letters from a diffrent set. So, following the Montessorian method, I created 2 other exercises.

First, I bought a plastic enveloppe and write the letters of a set on the front. I printed and laminated various pictures of words starting with corresponding sounds and placed them in the enveloppe. The children pick the 4 sandpaper letters they have studied as a set and placed them on the top of the table or the mat. They then take the pictures out, place them in a neatly stack in front of them and picking the 1st card on top. They say the word loud. They then have to place the card under the letter which represent the initial sound of the word.

For the second exercise, we proceed the same way but instead of pictures, we use objects. I keep the objects in a box labelled with the letters of the set in question.

It is important to note that at that stage children do not need to know the name of the letters. They just need to know their phonic sound. Most of them will actually have assimilated both name and sound, but this is not  requirement.

I know.. I said at the beginning of this post that I would talk about more "traditional" Montessori language materials. These activities are not "technically" Montessorian but they are based on the same principles. We are talking about the pink language series (pink object box and  pink picture box with the moveable alphabet, the pink picture and object box with reading cards etc...), the blue and green series etc...

Pink Object bo and Large Moveable Alphabet

Blue word list

Yet, the booklet and the 2 exercises I have set up are very much adapted to the needs in our classroom. A few children will swiftly move to the "traditional" language activities before the end of the year, though the local primary school teachers have asked us, local Montessori preschool teachers,  not to introduce the children to any letter and sound before their entrance in the primary school system. Why? I am not really sure. I think they fear the children will be given the wrong tools to familiarise themselves to phonics and letters.

However, I went to my son's parent/teacher last Monday and I have to say I was secretly delighted to see what I saw. Stefan is 5 and  started primary school last September. You'll be glad to hear that he is a model student (did she have the right child???). No, seriously, what struck me was her quick presentation of their pre-reading learnings.  She explained to me how they have started blending sounds to make words with the children in her class, after having learned the phonetic sound of each letter. I refrained myself from telling us that this was exactly how Montessorian teacher present pre-literacy exercises to the children to prepare them for reading and writing. I was not ready for a debate and neither did I have the time. But this proved to me that, once again, the Montessori method of education follows the individual needs of the child and his longing for hand-on learning experiences. Montessori has been copied by many educative systems throughout the years and I am proud to be one of its fervent followers. Did you actually know that in the 1980's, in France, the department of education had banned the name of Montessori from its textbooks? My mother who was at the time working as primary school teacher with children from 2 to 5 years old has told me that Montessori was a name not to be pronounced!! Why? She can't remember. What she didn't realise is that the French national curriculum for that age group was actually an adapted copy of every idea and method developed by Montessori!! Two examples: the silence game and the walking on the line. Inspectors had advised her to introduce these activities in her classroom... She only found out that these were actual Montessorian activities when I finished my first training and started reading all the notes she took over her 27 year career. She couldn't believe it!!! Neither did I!!!



Montessori Sensorial Education

As many of you know by know, I am currently doing an intensive Montessori training course and as I was revising some of our sensorial lessons, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the Montessori ideas and methodologies with you.

What are the Sensorial Materials in the Montessori preschool settings? What is the purpose of Sensorial education and how do the sensorial materials facilitate and support these aims? How do the sensorial materials compliment and relate to other subject areas in the Montessori curriculum?

It is not fully correct to say that Dr. Montessori was the first person to realize the importance of sense training for a child. She was greatly influenced by the ideas of his two predecessors – Jean Itard and Eduoard Seguin. She took the idea of introducing didactic materials and the three period name lessons to the child in Sensorial curriculum from Seguin. In fact, it was Seguin who first followed the scientific method of teaching which was later adopted by Dr. Montessori in a more concise and modified form. She also took the idea of isolating one sense and highlighting it through one presentation from her predecessors.

During the first 3 years of their life, the young child would have absorbed a large amount of information from his environment. Yet, the information at this point is a sea of impressions in the unconscious mind. As a child works further the young mind becomes aware of concepts of size, color, weight, quantity and so on. This is the beginning of sensorial education.  The purpose and aim of Sensorial education in the Montessori method is for the child to acquire clear, conscious information and to be able to then make classifications in his environment or to categorize.  An interesting aspect of this curriculum is that Montessori went deeper than the well-known five senses. Activities for auditory, gustatory (taste), and olfactory (smell) senses all exist. But visual is divided into three sub-areas: size, color, and form. When we look at things, we need to take all three factors into account. Montessori teaches to isolate each sense or each aspect of the sense, in order to truly refine it. She also extends the tactile sense. Tactile activities are done primarily with just the fingers. Stereognostic uses full arm movement and the entire hand. Baric is developing a sense of weight. Thermic is developing a sense of temperature.

Sensorial education is very also  important because it helps to fine-tune the various senses to aid in future professions. Montessori talks about the importance of a cook being able to smell the difference between fresh and tainted food, or a doctor being able to hear the slightest irregularity in a heartbeat. Sensorial education helps refine the senses so that the child can better appreciate the world around him. He leans different colors, sounds, tastes, textures, etc. It increases his desire to explore his world and allows him to constructively categorize all that he encounters.

Montessori understood that this intellectual activity was a manual, active approach. The materials are three dimensional and real and are presented in order and in sequence, building on concept upon concept. Sensorial materials are there to help children:

·         To understand what they hear and see

·         To discriminate differences by isolating them in one piece of equipment

·         To order the environment and enable them to identify objects for classification

·         To observe geometrical shapes in their environment

·         To refine their natural interest and ability to sort and classify sensorial impressions

Sensorial materials were designed by Montessori to cover every quality that can be perceived by the senses such as size, shape, composition, texture, noise, matching, weight, temperature…

All of the Sensorial materials were designed keeping the same ideas in mind.
1. All of the material isolates the one quality in particular that is to be worked with by the child. This allows the child to focus on one quality at a time and one only.
2. All of the materials have a control of error (like all the rest of the materials in the curriculum).
3. All of the material is aesthetically pleasing. This attracts the child’s attention to the objects (avoiding distraction) and allows the child to manipulate the materials with ease.

4. All of the material must be complete. This allows the child who is working with the material to finish through the entire piece of work without having to stop and find a missing piece.
5. All of the material is limited. The first use of the term limited refers to the fact that there is only one of each material in the environment. This calls for other students to build on their patience. The second use of the word limited is in reference to the idea that not all of one quality or piece of information is given to the child. This child is not given every colour in the world, but only a select few. This gives the child the keys to the information so it peaks his curiosity and leads him to learn more out of his own interest.

What is interesting is that a child learns about the environment through her/his senses, without them it would not be possible to learn from the materials of practical life, language or mathematics. Sensorial education provides an indirect foundation for other curriculum areas. For example, the Montessori bells are used for auditory discrimination, but also later can be used for musical interest. The red rods are used before the number rods as an introduction to mathematics. The bionomial and trinomial cubes are physical representations of algebraic equations. The color boxes provide a foundation for art. All of the activities introduce language to describe the world (e.g. thick/thin, names of colors, light/dark, silence/sound, rough/smooth., etc.). Sensorial education is the foundation of the Montessori curriculum because it has an effect on the whole person.

What did Maria Montessori mean by the term “Work Cycle” and “Cycles of Activity”?

In the Montessori prepared environment, we distinguish 2 types of cycles: cycle of work and cycle of activity.

When Montessori realised that concentration was the key to the child's natural development she began to ask for close observations of the children's behavior. Signorina Maccheroni in Rome was the first teacher who provided specific information concerning the way in which the children were working:

"The child keeps still for a while, and then chooses some task he finds easy, such as arranging the colors in gradation; he continues working at this for a time, but not for very long; he passes on to some more complicated task, such as that of composing words with the moveable letters, and perseveres with this for a long time (about half an hour). At this stage he ceases working, walks about the room, and appears calm; to a superficial observer he would seem to show signs of fatigue. But after a few minutes he undertakes some much more difficult work, and becomes so deeply absorbed in this that he shows us that he has reached the acme of his activity... When this work is finished, his activity comes to an end in all serenity; he contemplates his handiwork for a long time, then approaches the teacher, and begins to confide in her... The appearance of the child is that of a person who is rested, satisfied, and uplifted." (Spontaneous Activity in Education p 97, Chap III).

Montessori saw that the children went through a specific period during a morning's work when they appeared restless and seemingly ill at ease. Rather than interfere, however, she let the children carry on. What became apparent was that this period was critical as a build up to the higher level work that was to follow. The 'false fatigue' as she called it, allowed the child to prepare himself in his own time. Her teachers were therefore alerted not to intervene at these times as interruption prevented the children from moving on. Children who were allowed to complete full cycles of work seemed to demonstrate the need for periods of calm reflection on the tasks that they had accomplished. They exhibited a 'contemplative' quality in considering their own work and that of others around them. They increasingly showed a serenity and happiness that then encouraged them to care for and seek the company of others. It appeared that the natural work cycle of a child that had begun to concentrate was about three to four hours. The more a child was able to complete his own work cycles, the happier, more self-disciplined and self-motivated he became.

"These children show clearly that, if they are permitted without interruption to finish their cycle of work, they do not become tired... This revelation on the part of the child has shown us that the best way to help is to stand on one side and not interrupt."Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work .  p 292, Chap XVII

Within the cycle of work, we have  the cycles of activity. This simply means that each activity has a beginning (taking it from the shelf and preparation), middle (the activity takes place), and end (returning the material to the shelf and making it ready for the next child).

 Dr. Montessori was a big believer in organization and follow through. She felt that it was vital to teach children from their early years how to organize, work on, and finish tasks. She believed that imposing this outer, visible order on a child’s activities led to the creation of an inner sense of order and a habit of following things through to a logical conclusion.

The sensorial activities should be used in a sequence of steps ( Activity Cycle). The steps of the cycle are:

1. Get out a table mat and create a work space.

2. Bring the knobbed cylinders to the work space and use it as shown by the directress.

3. Clean up and replace the activity where it is stored.

4. Put the mat or rug away.

Following the Activity Cycle teaches a child to initiate, follow, and complete a series of tasks from start to finish, in an organized way and instil the habit of starting projects in an organized way and bringing them to a proper conclusion. As the child puts the knobbed cylinders away, perhaps talking with friends, it is usually very easy to observe satisfaction, pride and good self-esteem. This is part of what Montessori called Normalisation. Normalisation appears through the repetition of a three step cycle. The building of character and the formation of personality that we call normalization come about when children follow this cycle of activity.

Education of the senses in the Montessori environment generally proceeds in sequence. This reinforce the benefits of the cycle of activty. First, the child must recognise identities by matching something with it’s corresponding pair (through visual, tactile, smell, weight etc). Next, the child progresses to a recognition of contrasts. These are presented as the differences between two extremes e.g. rough, smooth, dark / pale, heavy / light. Finally, the child is ready to perceive, recognise and discriminate between fine differences, and they practise this by grading the various materials. The sensory stimulus that is being presented is, as far as possible, presented in isolation so as to better fix the child’s attention on that particular impression. This helps to order the senses in the child’s mind.

What is the “Three Period Lesson”? How is it relevant to the presentation of the sensorial materials.

All the sensorial materials follow a consistent strategy in design. All the materials involve the grading or matching of variations in a specific, isolated quality. All include a self-evident control of error. All support the development of gross motor skills by requiring the child to physically move the materials a fair distance, assemble them, and then return them to their original place and orientation. They also proceed in the necessary logical sequence of moving from concrete realizations of the perception involved to more abstract realizations. There are also certain guidelines in the presentation of the materials during a lesson which ensure that attention is drawn to the essential characteristics concerned. First, the teacher must decide when it is appropriate to introduce a child to a given work. the next step is to invite the child to a lesson on the proper use of the new material. The activity, or principal action of the presentation, must be clearly named. Now that the main principles for presenting the materials have been discussed, the method of actively teaching nomenclature must be addressed. The model used by Montessori is based on Seguin’s Three Period Lesson. The Three Period Lesson is presented after the child has already been introduced to a set of materials and had ample opportunity to manipulate the materials for themselves. The rationale is that the child must have had enough experience to develop the ability to perceive the essential characteristics of the materials necessary for their manipulation before they hope to attach a name to that characteristic. Learning to subsume those percepts into the concept of a word describing essential characteristics is the fundamental operation of conceptual abstraction.

Again, Montessori took the idea of the Three Period Lesson from the work of Edouard Seguin. He divided the lesson into three stages in order to obtain an association between an object and its corresponding name when he was working with his special needs children.

The First Period consists in pronouncing the necessary noun or adjective connected with the object very clearly, without adding any other information e.g 'This is smooth (help child to feel object), this is rough'. "Since the lesson in terminology should consist in establishing an association between a name and its object or with the abstract concept of the name itself, both object and name should strike the child's understanding at the same time, but only the name itself, and not some other word, should be pronounced.” (The Discovery of the Child p 156, Chap 11).

The Second period begins a few moments later and is there to ascertain whether the child had managed to make the correct associations. The teacher asks the child questions very slowly and distinctly, using only the noun or adjective that has been taught e.g. "Which one is smooth? Which one is rough?" The child will be asked to point his finger at the relevant object and the teacher knows whether or not he has understood. This stage is the most important one of the three and comprises the real lesson and assistance to the associative memory.

When the teacher sees that the child understands she can repeat the question a number of times to confirm the relationship and fix it in his mind. If, however, she sees that he has been unable to do so she does not correct him, but suspends the exercise without letting the child feel in any way uncomfortable, and delays it until another day.

The third period is a rapid verification of the first one and consists of the teacher asking the child "What is this?" and the child replying appropriately "It is smooth" etc. Again this stage can be repeated a few times to aid the association.