Geometric Construction & Montessori

Children love to build, and the book Block Play by Sharon MacDonald and Katheryn Davis explains both why they do, and what such a love of construction means for their holistic development. By using building blocks, students learn how to: 

• use oral language in a variety of situations
• explore cause and effect
• represent a thought or idea
• develop problem-solving techniques
• enhance creative and critical thinking skills
• match objects in one-to-one correspondence
• express quantities
• demonstrate an understanding of part and whole
• use vocabulary to compare same and different objects
• form groups by sorting and matching objects according to attributes
• acquire non-locomotor movement skills
• create, repeat, and extend patterns
• develop hand-eye coordination
• order items using specific criteria
• understand mapping skills
• use physical representations of addition and subtraction
• develop classification skills
• differentiate between sizes and shapes
• understand gravity, stability, weight, and balance
• think creatively to make and implement plans
• discover names and functions of buildings. (p. 12)

The use of concrete work is core to the Montessori philosophy. This seemingly simple "work" feels to a child like "play" and was one of Maria Montessori's gifts in preparing her classrooms over a century ago. By using their hands with meaningful materials as many times as needed or desired, children reinforce by themselves understanding of the curriculum and the world outside the classroom.

In geometry, students use the geometric solids to comprehend two- and three-dimensional shapes. The geometric cabinet contains wooden insets and frames of circles (small to large), quadrilaterals, and polygons. In lessons on the Seven Triangles of Reality, students measure with rulers and protractors three-sided polygons with varying side lengths and angles to find the one triangle which fits into both categories. Another hands-on material is the stick box, a container filled with color-coded wooden rods which aid in lessons involving lines. The 6-9 Montessori child can free his/her love of construction by using colored geometric blocks and natural wood building blocks.

In my classroom, students use these blocks as a "break" activity after they complete their daily responsibilities in language, math, and cultural studies. Boys and girls enjoy working with partners or individually to construct, discuss and/or describe, draw their creations on paper with colored pencils, and take photographs before triumphantly destroying their architecture. Children have a preternatural gift for creating their imaginative worlds in three-dimensional form. All these photos were taken by children, whose perspective takes in many viewpoints, gets down low or inside work, or zooms in for optimal effect.  In the coming months, our class will be studying architecture and construction in more depth -- through books, projects, and special visitors with experience in the adult world of building.