The Pink Tower is probably the most iconic of all Montessori materials, and it’s often referred to as the “symbol of Montessori.” Developed by Dr. Maria Montessori herself, it remains complete unchanged through time. You’ll find it in AMI Montessori classrooms around the world.
The simplicity of the wooden blocks makes the Pink Tower a perfect tool for students. It is a sensorial material comprised of ten cubes in three different dimensions (ranging in size from one cubic centimeter to ten cubic centimeters).
Purpose of the Pink Tower
Like most Montessori activities, there are a variety of purposes behind tasks. There is a surface level element for children to practice something specific, while also connecting to other areas of the classroom and future skills that they’ll need.
The Pink Tower functions in a handful of ways:
- helps a child build a concept of size in three dimensions. This includes working on visual perception and awareness of dimension, both leading to an understanding of size in the environment.
- develops a child’s fine muscular coordination. As they master this work, they’ll progress to perfecting hand movements, and the coordination of movement.
- prepares children for abstract mathematical concepts, including spatial volume and the cube root.
- encourages students to use multiple senses at once. This a perfect example of how Montessori materials are created in such a way to compliment a child’s stage of development, where they use all their senses to learn.
Dr. Montessori believed that working with the sensorial materials enables 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.
The Pink Tower is introduced around age 2 ½ to 3 years, and it’s likely that when a child first attempts to build the tower, they won’t be able to do it exactly right. However, through repetition, development of hand-eye coordination, and the ability to see visually where their mistakes are, the child is learning move their hands in a precise way. In this way, they are also practicing self-control.
Why is it Pink?
It’s certainly not random that pink is the color for this material. When Dr. Maria Montessori experimented with different colors, she observed that children were more attracted to the color pink, compared to other colors.
It’s also important that the cubes in the Pink Tower are a uniform color, shape and texture. This helps the child focus on only one quality of the material: its size!
Because the only difference from one cube to the next is its size, we are isolating the difficulty for the child. Isolation of difficulty is a Montessori educational technique that involves removing unnecessary obstacles, allowing the child to focus on and master only one difficult element.
In a typical set of blocks, there is usually a plethora of colors. But with the Pink Tower, children work on visual discriminating between sizes without attending to the distraction that different colors might present.
Extensions of the Pink Tower
There are many extensions to the basic exercise of building the tower. For instance, once a child has mastered building the tower, they can lay the cubes out in linear or spiral fashion on the rug, as well as compare the dimensions of the cubes with other materials in the classroom. The more they experiment with organizing, the more they demonstrate their understanding of the concepts.
Additionally, there are other materials in the Montessori environment that branch off the child’s understanding of the Pink Tower. The Brown Stairs and Red Rods, for example, also use isolation of difficulty to help children differentiate between width and height. These more advanced materials get introduced once a child has sufficient practice with the Pink Tower. Students will combine these materials to create new structures and arrangements.
Sense of Accomplishment
We often see a child as young as three years old, sometimes not much taller than the tower itself, very gingerly and with great concentration placing the smallest cube (only one cubic centimeter) atop the tower as the crowning achievement of their work. A sense of order and aesthetic is very pleasing to children, so it’s no wonder why Dr. Maria Montessori’s original Pink Tower remains a classic favorite for students and educators.
"A child who has become master of his acts through long and repeated exercises, and who has been encouraged by the pleasant and interesting activities in which he has been engaged, is a child filled with health and joy and remarkable for his calmness and discipline." - Dr. Maria Montessori, ('The Discovery of the Child', Clio Press Ltd, 92).
Annual Pink Tower Campaign
Like the blocks that grow from largest to smallest to build the Pink Tower, our fundraiser is most successful when it builds on a solid foundation of support from our entire community.
Our Annual Pink Tower Campaign helps us to do two main things:
Invest in the professional development of our staff through continuing education and the AMI Refresher Course, which keeps our faculty at the top of their field and ensures that we are staying true to our mission.
Increase socioeconomic diversity of our school through robust tuition assistance for current and prospective families. The need for financial assistance increases year by year, and we would like the opportunity to continue helping our community as much as possible.
Please consider making a gift of any amount by following this link. We’re grateful for any all and all contributions!! We are also grateful to everyone who provides so much love and support to CMS, from gifts to the Annual Campaign and volunteering your time, to the dedication of your children. We would not be where we are today without YOU.
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14000 Ladue Rd.
Chesterfield,
MO 63017
