Geometry has been defined as an awareness of the relationship between man and the objects in his environment. Montessori saw the study of geometry as practical, based on the physical reality of our world. Exploration of fundamental shapes, and their names and structure, provide the ground work for later studies ranging outside the confines of the classroom. As in most areas of study, the etymologies for geometry nomenclature both interest and add to the students’ knowledge of concepts.

Reviewing Montessori sensorial geometry materials is the starting point for the curriculum at the Lower Elementary level. Children go on to study all aspects of lines: their types, parts and their relationships. This leads to the study of the different kinds of angles and their parts, and the introduction of congruency, similarity, and equivalence. A continuing study of triangles teaches their classification by kinds of sides and angles. Other plane figures are next, with classification of polygons, from 3-sided to dodecagons (12-sided figures) in both regular and irregular forms. Measurement of plane figures is then introduced.

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