Intent, engrossed Mario worked for days until he grew expert in piling, one upon the other, the graded, rose-colored blocks of the Montessori Tower. Soon he could erect the tower, blindfolded. Just a fascinating play it looked, as interesting as is the play of our babies with their nested picture blocks, but it was play with a purpose. It taught Mario to _feel_ and then to discriminate, mentally, between objects that differ in dimension, one from another.
Then came the fun of laying in order the graded blocks of the Montessori Broad Stair. Building steps, it was, as all home children instinctively struggle to build steps with their blocks, with dominoes, with pebbles and rocks of different sizes.
Why do children like to build steps; is it not because they live in a world of _high_ and _low_, and _higher_ and _lower_ things? We grown-ups say, “It is a beautiful sky-line, the tall and low buildings rubbing shoulders,” or “The clouds are banked in a red and gold mass.” How did we learn the beauty of gradation of form in a city, in nature? Once when we were as little as Mario we tried to build stairs, we jumped, happily, from one step to another; we climbed, we learned height and depth by _feeling_ them. So, Mario learned to see minute variations in the height of objects through the broad stair.
He spent hours fitting the little wooden cylinders in their places in their frames. How he had longed to play with the vases and jugs at home, some tall and some short, some thick and some thin. And how many times his mother had prevented his digging rows of little holes in the garden in which to fit, first, a fat thumb, then a slim forefinger; last, a tiny finger! With the Montessori geometric insets, he could enjoy this hole play, and, at the same time, learn, through _feeling_, to recognize very fine differences in height and breadth. One day Mario found a little set of drawers in the big white material cupboard at the Montessori School. It made him remember his grandmother’s great shelf of drawers with the polished brass knobs. In these were hidden fascinating, musty-smelling wool shawls, silk scarfs, soft embroideries, and stiff, bright ribbons. Mario’s secret happiness had been to climb upon a stool, clutch a brass knob, pull, and then delve pink fingers into the sense-feeding horde of stuffs. He would close his eyes and enjoy the _feel_ of them, but there was always the rude awakening.