One of the play-based activities you are likely to find in a Montessori daycare is the use of sensory rollers. These textured paint rollers help children explore tactile data, benefit muscle development, and help children develop important early skills. Remember, very small children have very little experience with the world they live in, and sensorial tools like this assist them in building a store of associative sensory data.
1. Building Fine Motor Skills
Holding the roller and learning to direct its movement as they paint is a good way to develop fine motor skills in a Montessori daycare, strengthening muscles and bones, and encouraging the use of hand-eye coordination. Fine motor skills are an important part of learning to write, and sensory rollers prepare children for gripping a pencil in due time.
2. Art and Critical Thinking
Art is a way for people to express themselves, beginning in early childhood and progressing throughout that person's life. Studies have shown that art has a calming effect, helps children maintain more focus, and promotes critical thinking skills, spatial development, and more. Whether they are using sensory rollers, fingerpainting, or drawing with crayons, children need to be encouraged to use art, and receive positive reinforcement when they do,
3. Expanding Sensory Skills
Very young children are like a dry sponge that soaks up knowledge. Without any previous experiences to draw from, every new activity is a discovery, and through those discoveries children will discover their individual interests. The tools they use for discovery will become more complex as they get older, but each phase of learning uses the most appropriate ones for the developmental stage a child is in.
Sensory roller painting may seem like an amusing game for children, but beneath the surface, it is one of many carefully chosen tools that help children develop. Montessori classrooms take a multi-faceted approach to education and activities that promote development in several critical areas are a cornerstone of the prepared environment.
1. Building Fine Motor Skills
Holding the roller and learning to direct its movement as they paint is a good way to develop fine motor skills in a Montessori daycare, strengthening muscles and bones, and encouraging the use of hand-eye coordination. Fine motor skills are an important part of learning to write, and sensory rollers prepare children for gripping a pencil in due time.
2. Art and Critical Thinking
Art is a way for people to express themselves, beginning in early childhood and progressing throughout that person's life. Studies have shown that art has a calming effect, helps children maintain more focus, and promotes critical thinking skills, spatial development, and more. Whether they are using sensory rollers, fingerpainting, or drawing with crayons, children need to be encouraged to use art, and receive positive reinforcement when they do,
3. Expanding Sensory Skills
Very young children are like a dry sponge that soaks up knowledge. Without any previous experiences to draw from, every new activity is a discovery, and through those discoveries children will discover their individual interests. The tools they use for discovery will become more complex as they get older, but each phase of learning uses the most appropriate ones for the developmental stage a child is in.
Sensory roller painting may seem like an amusing game for children, but beneath the surface, it is one of many carefully chosen tools that help children develop. Montessori classrooms take a multi-faceted approach to education and activities that promote development in several critical areas are a cornerstone of the prepared environment.
