Montessori Baric Tablets with storage box

PRESENTING THE MATERIAL:

Three sets of seven wooden tablets in three boxes:

• oak (dark brown)
• poplar (light brown)
• beech (in between)

Between each kind of tablet there is a difference in weight, knowing that oak is the heaviest, then beech, then poplar.

Example of a practical exercise:

1. 1. Go with the child to fetch two boxes from the shelf, the one with the heaviest tablets and the one with the lightest tablets
   2. Sit down at a table with the child
   3. Place the two boxes side by side in front of you and take out the tablets. Form two columns in front of each box
   4. Take a tablet in each hand, holding them with the fingertips, and place them at the edge of the table. Pick them up again, then turn your hands over, palms facing the sky, placing the tablets on the fingertips. Make a balancing gesture with both hands
   5. Ask the child to take the same position, elbows off the table, forearms horizontal and palms open towards the sky
   6. Place a tablet in each of their hands on the fingertips and ask them whether they find them of the same weight
   7. For the following tablets, ask them to close their eyes.
   8. For the first three times take different tablets, then for the remaining two take two different tablets
   9. Each time ask the child whether they find them the same weight or not
   10. Once the child can discriminate well between these two sets (oak and poplar), take the beech set and the poplar set
   11. Proceed in the same way as for the two previous sets of tablets
   12. If the child gets two tablets wrong, set them aside on the table and give them to them again at the end
   13. When the child can discriminate well between these two sets, take the beech box and the oak box
   14. Proceed in the same way, always asking the child to close their eyes.

Once the child can do the exercise very well, offer them the three kinds of tablet. Place a tablet in each hand, alternating: an "oak"/a "beech", then a "poplar"/an "oak", a "beech"/a "beech", and so on...