Knobbed Cylinders

This activity is one of the first Sensorial activities that we present to children in Montessori classes. Knobbed cylinders are wooden cylinders of varying diameter and heights, all of which must be inserted into the correct hole. The children are asked to fit the correct sized cylinder into the correct hole. If a child makes a mistake and puts the wrong knobbed cylinder into the wrong hole, then the activity cannot be completed and the child must find the problem and re-order the knobbed cylinders into the correct holes.

What skills does the Knobbed Cylinder activity teach?

Children will acquire many different skills by mastering the knobbed cylinder activity, for example one-to-one correspondence (working with the teacher), crossing the mid-line, development of the correct pincer grip, alignment and judgment, fine motor coordination, and hand-eye coordination. By using all four of the knobbed cylinder sets, children can learn and internalize the differences in size, height, and diameter.

What are Knobbed Cylinders?

There are usually four different Knobbed cylinders in the Montessori classroom, all differentiating in height and diameter. Each cylinder comes with a small wooden knob at the end for gripping the cylinder.

How Knobbed Cylinders is presented

The directress will show the child how to take out each cylinder one by one, using the pincer grip, starting from the broadest cylinder and also from left to right. The directress should take some time in placing the cylinders back into the socket, by looking at each socket and the cylinder carefully.

Work slowly so the child can completely absorb what you are doing. Each of the four knobbed cylinders is presented in the same way. It is now the child’s turn to have a try.

Looking for more Montessori activities?

Here is the full list of the Montessori tasks, including Visual and Muscle Discrimination Sense activities, Tactile Sense activities, Chromatic Sense activities, Auditory Sense activities, Thermic Sense activities, Gustatory Sense activities, Baric Sense activities, Olfactory Sense activities, Stereognostic Sense activities, Geometry activities, and Algebra activities. Just click on the activity you want to learn about to go there.