Probably the most famous & favourite of all Montessori materials, you will find it in Montessori classrooms around the world & was actually designed by Dr. Maria Montessori herself.
Introduced into the Montessori environment when children are 2.5 – 3 years old, the Pink Tower is a scientifically designed material & part of the Sensorial Area of the classroom. Importance is placed on the cubes all being the same colour, shape & texture, in order to help the child focus on one important quality of the material – size!
It is made up of of 10 wooden cubes, ranging in size from 1cm cubed, to 10cm cubed, in 3 different dimensions. The cubes progressively get bigger in the algebraic series of the third power. This means the second cube equals 8 of the first (23), the third cube equals 27 of the first (33) & so on. The Pink Tower helps a child build a concept of size in three dimensions. This includes working on visual perception, & awareness of dimension, both leading to an understanding of size in the environment.
As our little ones start taking each cube, one by one – starting from the smallest – to a mat & begin to stack them, they will start to notice the successively larger size & heavier weight of each block. Maria Montessori believed that working with Sensorial materials enables children to refine their senses, have a better understanding of what they are seeing, feeling, touching or smelling, & helps with the development of cognitive intelligence. The Pink Tower also helps develop a child’s fine muscular coordination. The activity stemming from this material works on the perfection of hand movements, & the coordination of movement.
Additionally, the Pink Tower lays groundwork for Language & Math. It prepares the hand for writing, as children need to use the 3-finger grip to carry the cubes, while words such as cube, large, small, bigger & biggest are emphasised. It also lays groundwork for the mathematical mind as it indirectly introduces the Decimal System & introduces Geometry, as well as abstract mathematical concepts that include preparation for spatial volume, & the cube root. These concepts are not introduced to the child, but are absorbed by their Absorbent Mind.
The Pink Tower is a perfect example of how Montessori materials require children to use multiple sense at once. They are created in such a way to compliment a child’s stage of development, where they use all their senses to learn.
So why is it pink?
Dr. Maria Montessori experimented with different colours & she observed that the children were actually more attracted to the colour pink, compared to any of the other colours.
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