THE PINK TOWER, ICONIC MONTESSORI MATERIAL

The Pink Tower is a scientifically designed material in the Sensorial Area of the classroom. Dr. Montessori believed that working with the Sensorial materials enables the children to refine their senses, have a clearer understanding of what they are seeing, feeling, touching or smelling, and  helps with the development of intelligence. 

Importantly, the cubes in the Pink Tower are all the same colour, shape and texture. This helps the child to focus on one important quality of the material – size!

The Pink Tower aims to refine a child’s visual sense by discriminating differences in dimension. As a child starts taking each cube (starting from the smallest) to a mat, they can feel the weight and progression of its size. As they build the Tower, they refine their voluntary movement. The child learns self-control by doing the activity precisely and exactly.

When a child first attempts to build the Pink Tower, they may not be able to do it exactly right, they may not be able to control their movements yet. Through repetition and development of their hand-eye coordination, the child is able to make their hands move in a precise way. This is the key to self-control. When the child masters the skill, they master themselves, by mastering their actions. 

Using their visual perception, the child  can self-assess whether they’ve built the Tower in order. This control of error helps the child realize what’s wrong and correct any mistakes. Through this, the child grows more independent and confident.