Montessori Tidbits: Learning Sounds🔤🦻

In the Montessori classroom, we focus on the sound a letter makes 🔊 rather than its name. This helps children put words together and read more naturally, making the process easier and faster! 🚀📖

We start by listening to sounds in words 🎶, without showing any symbols. A fun and easy game to play anywhere is "I-Spy" 👀:🕵️‍♀️ "I spy with my little eye something that starts with the sound ‘m’! Can you find it?"

Once a child is proficient at recognizing sounds in words, they begin associating the symbol to the sound 🔠. A key material in unlocking language learning in the Early Childhood Montessori classroom is the Sandpaper Letters ✋🔤.

These are pink and blue boards with letters in sandpaper ✨.

🖍️ The child uses their first two fingers (the same ones used for holding a pencil ✏️) to trace the letter while saying its sound.

By using their:👀 Eyes – to see the symbol

🤲 Fingers – to feel the shape

💪 Arm – to form it

🗣️ Voice – to say the sound

...they are committing the symbol to memory! 🧠✨ (Both muscle memory for writing & cognitive memory for reading!)

🔍 Notice that the Sandpaper Letters are lowercase? Since lowercase letters appear more frequently in written communication 📜, Maria Montessori designed lessons so that children recognize lowercase before uppercase letters! 🔡✅