Stereognostic Sense

Stereognostic sense is the ability to perceive and understand the form and nature of objects by the sense of touch.

Stereognostic Sense: The stereognostic sense exercises enable the child to develop concepts by feeling objects and making recognition based on the feeling. The exercises include also movement of the hand and arm around the object, creating an impression of movement as added to the sense of touch, resulting in what is known as muscular memory. This is the knowledge derived from the recognition of the movements made. The Montessori materials and exercises used in the stereognostic sense are Geometric solids, Mystery bags, Sorting Trays, Puzzle maps, and Sandpaper Globe.

How to develop Stereognostic Sense: The development of the Stereognostic sense is an important part of the child’s work in the sensorial area. Just as important as any of the other of senses, the stereognostic sense allows the child to discriminate size and shape through the use of touch. The use of this sense allows the child to have a mental picture through the use of touch and movement. Once the child knows how to feel the object in the hand and is familiar with it, the objects are then used with the blindfold. In addition to using our sense of touch to determine texture and weight, our sense of touch can also provide information about size and shape.

Exercises for Stereognostic Sense: Below are few exercises that can be used to enhance this sense. The directress needs to do all these exercise in front of the child herself. The stereognostic activities are first done with eyes open and then by using blindfold. But try not to force children to use blindfold. By doing very simple but interesting exercises we can start developing strong stereognostic sense.

Mystery Bags:

Ø  A bag that has a drawstring to hide the contents.

Ø  Fill that bag with amazing contents such as tiny pebbles, glass marbles, soft feathers, wooden blocks, ribbon, spoons, key, small cars, etc. and anything else you find interesting.

Ø  Child look all these objects, feel them by touching via hands. Introduce names of each item.

Ø  Then closes his eyes or used blindfold, put his hand in the bag feel the object and named it and then takes it out from the bag.

Ø  Then open his eyes and sees what it is.

Sorting Trays:

Ø  A tray having four or more saucers.

Ø  Each saucer contains different kind of grains, seeds, beans, peas, rice, lentils etc. separately.

Ø  Another tray of same quantity of saucer but empty.

Ø  Child first checks all these things by their hands and feels them. And then put each item in the second tray’s saucer separately. Introduce names of each item.

Ø  Then child closes his eyes or used blindfold, again feel the items, named it, and then put it into the second tray.

Ø  Then open his eyes and sees how perfectly he done.

Ø  It can also be done by changing this exercise as by mixing all these items in one bowl and child needs to separate them in different saucers.

Puzzle Maps:

Ø  A puzzle map of Pakistan and a Globe.

Ø  Let’s take the puzzle map of Pakistan, where puzzles are divided in provinces.

Ø  Show the child a globe and the complete map of Pakistan. Show the child where is Pakistan in the Globe. After that put that globe aside.

Ø  Focus on puzzle.

Ø  Child point out the outline of each province and named the province.

Ø  Slowly and carefully put all pieces of puzzles one by one back into the puzzle.

Sandpaper Globe:

Ø  A world Globe with land areas covered with sandpaper and water are with blue paint.

Ø  Child holds the globe and calls its name.

Ø  Child point to the sandpaper area and says “This is land”, the point to blue area and say “This is water”.

Ø  Feel another area on the globe and repeat where land is and where water is.

These are great group and individual exercises that children can play anywhere.