Just a note on the presentation: In AMI Montessori, the trinomial cube is found in the visual non-isolating section of the Sensorial Area. This means that before the child works with this material in this section of the Sensorial Area, he must master the materials in the Visual section of the Sensorial Area. This begins with the cylinder blocks, pink tower, brown stair, red rods, color tablets, and geometry cabinet. Those materials work with the isolated qualities of color, shape and dimension - which is associated with the visual sense. When the child has refined his sense of vision with each of those qualities separately, they combine those qualities in the in the visual "non-isolating" area...meaning we combine the qualities of color, dimension, and shape in one material. That is why the trinomial cube uses multiple colors, dimensions, and shapes and is introduced after the visual materials with isolated qualities. You will notice I did not point to where the pieces needed to go or match the prisms and cubes to the top of the box while performing this demonstration. That's because it is a visual work, meaning the sense of sight is what is being refined in this work. The child needs to observe through the visual sense, using just the eyes, how the pieces fit together. As an extension, once this work is too easy, you may use it as a stereognostic sense material. This simply means you can allow the child to use a blindfold or close his eyes to put the pieces together.
Just a note on the presentation:
In AMI Montessori, the trinomial cube is found in the visual non-isolating section of the Sensorial Area. This means that before the child works with this material in this section of the Sensorial Area, he must master the materials in the Visual section of the Sensorial Area. This begins with the cylinder blocks, pink tower, brown stair, red rods, color tablets, and geometry cabinet. Those materials work with the isolated qualities of color, shape and dimension - which is associated with the visual sense. When the child has refined his sense of vision with each of those qualities separately, they combine those qualities in the in the visual "non-isolating" area...meaning we combine the qualities of color, dimension, and shape in one material. That is why the trinomial cube uses multiple colors, dimensions, and shapes and is introduced after the visual materials with isolated qualities.
You will notice I did not point to where the pieces needed to go or match the prisms and cubes to the top of the box while performing this demonstration. That's because it is a visual work, meaning the sense of sight is what is being refined in this work. The child needs to observe through the visual sense, using just the eyes, how the pieces fit together.
As an extension, once this work is too easy, you may use it as a stereognostic sense material. This simply means you can allow the child to use a blindfold or close his eyes to put the pieces together.