Sound Cylinders (Sound Boxes)

Direct aim. To match sounds of equal loudness, then to grade six sounds from loud to soft.

Indirect aims, the ones you will not see at once

Two boxes of six sealed wooden cylinders, one set with red lids and one with blue. Each cylinder in one box has a twin in the other that sounds the same. Montessori Outlet, Alison's and Nienhuis all list it that way.

Montessori's 1914 version was a double set of six cardboard cylinders, some with wooden covers. In 1912 she used small boxes of sand or pebbles, shaken to make noises.

A table in a quiet room. Turn off music and screens first; the softest cylinder is close to silent.

A blindfold or a soft scarf, for later.

1. 1Bring both boxes to the table. Set the red-lidded cylinders in a row on the left and the blue in a row on the right.Say "Let's listen." Then wait until the room is quiet.
2. 2Pick up one red cylinder and shake it beside your ear, slowly, twice.Silent A small shake, close to the ear.
3. 3Pick up a blue cylinder and shake it beside the other ear. Shake the two in turn.Silent Turn your head a little toward each sound in turn.
4. 4If they sound the same, stand them side by side in the middle. If not, put the blue one back and try another.Silent A nod as the pair goes down is enough.
5. 5Pair all six, then mix them and invite the child to pair them.Say "Now you."
6. 6On a later day, grade one set: find the loudest, then the next loudest, down to the softest, in a row.Say "Which is the loudest?" Put it at the left and carry on in silence.

The softest cylinder, so quiet the child has to hold still to hear it.

One cylinder at each ear, shaken in turn.

The blindfold. Montessori's children did this exercise with their eyes covered.

Cylinders that won't open: the sound can't be seen, only heard.

The ear, and the second set. Every cylinder has one match, so a wrong pair leaves two odd ones at the end. When grading, the other color's row is the check: grade both sets and the pairs should line up across.

Montessori’s name for this check is the control of error.

• Pairing blindfolded
• Grading both sets, then pairing across the two rows
• Pairing at a distance: one set on a table across the room, each match found by memory
• Montessori's silence game: the room so still that a name whispered from the next room can be heard
• Naming loud and soft sounds on a walk around the house or garden

Variations

This work needs only the material, so it has no printable of its own. The shelf plan below places it among the other works for the same age.

Free to print for your family, no email needed. Print at 100%, not “fit to page”, so the drawings keep their scale. Every printable on the site is listed on the printables page.

Ready for the first presentation

Ready for the next lesson

Seal homemade cylinders with glue. Rice, beans and salt are choking and inhaling hazards for a toddler.

Shake beside the ear, never pressed against it.

We have not bought the paid homeschool curricula, so they are not listed here.

1. Maria Montessori, Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook (1914)

   Sensory Education, Fig. 26

   A series of six cardboard cylinders, closed entirely or with wooden covers, which when shaken produce sounds varying in intensity from loud to almost imperceptible.

   Sensory Education

   There is a double set; the child first arranges cylinders of equal sound in pairs, then arranges the six cylinders in a series by loudness, seated at a table with his eyes blindfolded.

   The sound exercise is analogous to the color spools, which are also paired and then arranged in gradation.

   The order of sensory education is recognition of identities, then of contrasts, then discrimination between objects very similar to one another.

2. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method (1912)

   Chapter XIII, Exercise for the Discrimination of Sounds

   For the gradation of noises Montessori used small boxes filled with different substances, more or less fine, such as sand or pebbles, and the noises are produced by shaking the boxes.

   When perfect silence is established, children listen to the ticking of the clock and are called one by one from an adjoining room in a low voice, which gives an approximate knowledge of the child's hearing.

   Chapter XX, Sequence of Exercises

   In the third grade the stimuli for the sense of hearing, sounds and noises, are presented together with the weight tablets.

   Chapter XII, Education of the Senses

   Exercises on the sense of hearing are given more successfully in silence and even in darkness, and the blindfold increases the children's interest.

Lesson text and the scope and sequence are CC BY 4.0: reuse them with credit to Owen Wren, Homeschool Montessori, and a link. Photos and illustrations are all rights reserved. The plates from Montessori's 1912 and 1914 books are public domain and not ours. Terms.