“The senses, being explorers of our world, open the way to knowledge.

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The Sensorial area is a pre-academic area in the prepared environment that bridges between activities in the Practical Life area and those in Mathematics and Language.  With carefully designed materials and proper presentations, the child learns to manipulate the material in a way that is mentally and physically stimulating, allowing the child to grow spiritually and physically. 

Children will acquire knowledge and experience through their five different senses: visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory.  These concrete experiences contribute to the learning of language and categorization later in both the Language and Math area.  The key importance in the Sensorial area is experience.  The result of the manipulation of the material is not the goal of the presentations, it is the experience that the child gains.  The success in working with the materials to achieve the result indicates that the child understands the concept of, for example, size, through the building of the Pink Tower.  It is the process through which the child successfully builds the material, time over time, with numerous failures, that she refines her thoughts and movements, thereby acquiring knowledge.