The Pink Tower is one of the core Montessori materials in the sensorial area of the Montessori curriculum. Designed to be both visually appealing and engaging, the Pink Tower, like the majority of Montessori materials has both a direct and indirect purpose. The Pink Tower consists of 10 wooden cubes, ranging in size from 1 cubic centimetre to 10 cubic centimetres. Importantly, the cubes in the Pink Tower are all the same colour, shape and texture. This directs the child’s attention to one important quality of the material – size! The Pink Tower refines a child’s visual sense by discriminating differences in dimension. As a child carries each cube to a mat they feel the change in size and weight. As a child builds the Tower, they also refine their coordination and precision, learning self-control and developing concentration by doing the activity with care.

When a child first begins to work with The Pink Tower in our Toddlers program, they may not yet be able to control their movements but with repetition the child will develop their hand-eye coordination and master their actions.

As with many of the Montessori materials, a natural control of error is built in. For example, through visual discrimination the child can easily see if the blocks are placed in the wrong order and can correct their mistake building resilience, confidence and independence.

While the purpose of the Pink Tower is not to teach mathematical and literacy concepts they are absorbed by the young child as they work with the material. For example, children are introduced to new vocabulary such as cube, large, small, bigger and biggest. The Decimal System is indirectly introduced as the child works with 10 cubes representing the numbers 1-10. Geometry is also introduced as the child explores the different cubes and their dimensions. Indeed, older children may return to the Pink Tower to explore concepts such as cube roots and volume.