Sensor 32. The Bells

Shu-Chen Yen's On-Line Montessori Albums

SENSORIAL-MOTOR ALBUM

32. THE BELLS

MATERIALS:

Twenty-six bells, a wooden mallet for striking the bells, a silencer for stopping the sound, and two boards painted green with white and black rectangles in the pattern of the black and white keys on a piano keyboard.

The bells with white bases produce the whole tones of a major scale: i.e., (Middle) C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C (third space).

Those with black bases produce the half tones or sharps and flats of the tones listed above.

The bells with natural wood bases match the tones of the black and white bells.

PRESENTATION:

1. Remove from the Bells table, one at a time, each black bell as well as the brown bell directly in front of it, and place these ten bells on a table or on a shelf elsewhere in the room.

2. Invite the child to stand at the table with the remaining white and corresponding brown bells on the board.

3. Select three brown bells contrasting in tone (low D, F and B, for example, which can be identified by their position on the piano keyboard pattern), and place them together, in a mixed up order, in the center of the space on the table in front of the board.

4. Take up the striker, strike the white bell behind one of the three new empty spaces, and listen carefully to the sound. Then strike one of the three removed brown bells. If the tones heard do not match, remove the brown bell just struck to the far right corner of the table.

5. Strike the same white bell again, and try a second brown bell.

6. Repeat until you find the match. Invite the child to strike each bell of the matched pair. Place the brown bell back in front of its matching white one, and return the rejected brown ones, in the far right corner of the table, to the center of the space in front of the board.

7. Now strike the white bell behind one of the remaining empty spaces, find its matching brown bell as before, and invite the child to strike the matched pair.

8. Check the at the remaining third pair of bells matches, and replace the last brown one on the board.

POINT OF INTEREST:

The sound of the bell at the moment it is struck by the mallet and the silence when stopped by the silencer; the moment at which the matching bell is found.

CONTROL OF ERROR:

If a pair of bells does not sound the same.

DIRECT AIM:

Auditory discrimination of sound, i.e., pitch.

INDIRECT AIM:

Preparation for music.

AGE:

4 years.

LANGUAGE:

High, low, higher, lower, highest, lowest; the names of the notes of the scale, i.e., do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do--or the name of the pitches produced by the bells.

EXTENSION:

1. Another day, repeat the presentation with three new pairs of clearly contrasting bells.

2. Another day, do the presentation with another three pairs (re-using a pair used before).

3. Another day, do the presentation with all eight brown bells mixed up on the front edge of the table.

--- Start with any white bell, and match all eight pairs in random order, inviting the child to select which white bell to match next and which brown bell to try. Also allow the child to remove the rejected brown bells to the far right corner, to verify each matched pair, and to put the selected brown bell back on the board in front of its corresponding white one. Except when the child verifies a match, you should continue to wield the striker.

--- After you have completed the matching, again remove all eight brown bells (or any lesser number if the child does not seem ready for eight) from the board, place them in a random order in the space in front, and invite the child to pair by the same process, but without your help. When finished, invite the child to check the pairing by a comparison to the tone of each white bell, selected in random order, with the tone of the brown bell in front of it.