The Pink Tower

The pink tower is one of the many educational materials Dr. Montessori made for her students. I gave Abe and Mimi a lesson on the pink tower (stacking largest to smallest) many months ago just before we left Saudi Arabia using guidelines from infomontessori and "Basic Montessori" by David Gettman, but we recently revisited the lesson mainly for Mimi since she was just 2 years old at the time of the first lesson and now she is 2.5 and showing lots of interest in it. You might wonder, "What makes the pink tower so special?" Well all the materials Dr. Montessori made are the result of her careful observations of children and their development. Every material she designed was to aid the child's development. The pink tower has two distinct purposes and that is to develop visual discrimination of differences in three dimensions and fine muscular coordination, but also indirectly "prepares the child for the concept of numbers" and for "later work in geometry," according to Gettman. 

In this video below you will see Mimi doing the pink tower on her own for the first time. She chose to do this activity, first rolling out the work mat and carefully setting out each piece. If you watch carefully you will see her correct herself as she tries one block and realizes it is not correct for stacking largest to smallest. Also notice that I never interrupted her! I let the process flow, and it is just so beautiful to see her thinking and figuring it out for herself :)

I also just want to note that the formal lesson on the pink tower is making a tower from the largest block to the smallest but the pink tower can be manipulated in many ways. Abe and Mimi explore many other possibilities with the pink tower, which is absolutely fine.