What’s more beautiful than simple percussion instruments made from nature? UMA graduate, Tamara Stoll, created a lovely basket of instruments by collecting shells, rocks, and driftwood pieces from her beach in Oregon. She included brass bells and woven wrist bands to her musical collection. Just lovely!

Here’s a lovely idea for helping to create a spirit of respect and cooperation in the classroom. 

UMA graduate, Renata Lemire from Alberta, Canada, shares her Montessori original Sensorial Project which she entitled: Nature’s Beauty – Smooth and Bumpy.

Materials:

1. Wooden tray
2. Willow basket
3. Cotton floor mat
4. Transparent vinyl smooth/bumpy mat, cut same size as floor  mat.  One side is left smooth and the other size has dried, clear, white glue “bumps” randomly placed.
5. Five objects found in nature that are bumpy in texture with a corresponding match of the same object that is smooth in texture. Each pair of objects should be approximately the same size to one another.

• Birch and maple tree bark (better if cross section of a small log from each tree is available, so you do not have to kill a tree to obtain it
• A bumpy and a smooth stone
• An open, mature and an immature, but brown spruce pinecone
• Smooth wild berry and a berry made of tiny smaller ‘bumps’ similar to a raspberry (non-poisonous, of course)
• A smooth and a bumpy branch 

1. Visual: match the “same to same”
2. Tactile: separate by “smooth and bumpy”

​A very beautiful and inviting original Sensorial project!

(The transparent vinyl mat lays on top of the cotton floor mat):