Montessori Language Activities
The Very Beginning
Even before infant say their first words, they are learning to understand their language- or languages if you’re a bilingual family! Infants learn to understand spoken language, in addition to gestures and facial expressions. As they take in everything, parents and caregivers want to be able to do all we can to support our children’s language development.
Early Montessori Activities
In toddler and primary Montessori classrooms, one focus in the language are is building vocabulary. One activity might be a basket of toy vehicles, such as a train, car, plane, and a bike. The children are free to explore the objects and the adult will name the objects for the child.
The next step will be matching objects to objects. These activities have a few sets of identical objects. The child is shown how to match the objects and may be given the names of each object as well.
After the child has mastered matching objects, she will be introduced to matching object to pictures. The pictures would first be photos of the objects, then possibly the shadow of the object, then an outline of the object.
Finally, children may begin matching with 3 part cards. These cards have a set of control cards, which have an image with a label, such as a photo of a jaguar and the word “jaguar” written below. Then there are a set of photo cards and a set of label cards. The child can practice matching the photos and the label cards to the control card, even before he learns to read.
These activities not only are helping children gain an extensive vocabulary, but are also supporting the development of visual discrimination. This is a skill that will help the child with letter recognition when the time comes.
Sound Games
Before actual letters are introduced to children, we play sound games with them. This helps build phonemic awareness. Often this game is called I Spy. This is a very easy game to play at home with your toddler, too.
We start with a basket of objects, ideally an object that has each beginning sound in the alphabet. Examples might be an apple, ball, cat, die, elephant, and so forth. For a very young child, I would invite the child (or children) to choose an object. I would say, “Oh, you chose a cat,” emphasizing the beginning sound. Then I would say, “I Spy with my eye something in Susan’s hand that starts with a /c/.” The child would typically respond with an excited, “Cat!”
As they become more familiar with the concept, I will invited them to choose a few objects to line up, name the objects, and ask them to find the object that starts with one particular sound. Eventually we will move on to more object and practice hearing the ending and middle sounds in words.
Sandpaper Letters
Sandpaper letters are the main material used in a Montessori classroom to teach letters. These are only introduced after a child has strong phonemic awareness.
While different guides introduce the letters differently, a few things are always the same. Firstly, we only use lower case letters. Most letters a child will encounter will be lower case, so this will be the most useful. [Note: while we focus on lower case letters, letters that must be upper case will be properly capitalized.]
Secondly, we never use the letter’s name. Children will eventually need to know the letter’s name, but to learn to write and read, the sound the letter makes is most useful. Thirdly, the vowels will only be given short vowel sounds to start. Long vowels will come later with other lessons. Finally, all the consonants will be on a pink board; all vowels are on blue boards.
When giving the lesson, the teacher will silently trace the letter and give the sound it makes. The child is invited to repeat this and a three period lesson will be given.
The Next Steps
After letter sounds have been mastered, children will be introduced to the moveable alphabet. We use this material to let the child build words, starting with simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. As they become more confident with this, we will introduce simple consonant blends.
Reading will come later. Children will often begin reading the words they build back to themselves and adults. Early reading activities are often more matching activities, matching simple CVC words to their pictures.
From there, children learn more ways to spell and write words, develop more fine motor skills for better penmanship, and begin reading books.
