Pre-reading Using Montessori Language Objects

I’ve been showing you glimpses of our Montessori Language Objects for the past few months but haven’t published our entire collection. So for this 12 Months of Montessori Series, I’d like to showcase our Language Objects (beginning letters) from A to Z!  I’m giving you ideas on what to collect and where to get them (affiliate links). But before anything else, I wanted to give credits to Mavi for assembling most of these objects for me.  As young as 1.5years old, Mavi has this unusual interest with letters and reading.  He showed signs early on and by 36 months, he’s able to read CVC books.  Anyway, this “Montessori Language Objects” is the same method I used with Mavi 5 years ago and it totally worked for us. 

To those of you who are unfamiliar of this method, it’s simply a collection of 3-dimensional miniature objects with names that matches the beginning sound or beginning letter for each letter of the alphabet.  This is one of the most popular methods in a Montessori environment for early reading.  Vito is doing very well with his letter sounds using these objects!

Without much further ado, here’s my collection of objects which I started collecting 5 years ago. 

A:  astronaut, ambulance, apple, anchor
B:  bus, bed, basket, bike, bread

C:  car, corn, can, cup, carrot, cake, cow
D:  doctor, dice, dog, door, donut, dinosaur, duck

E:  elephant, egg, Earth
F:  fire, fish, frog, fork, firetruck (link provided points to the miniature of Safari Toob)

G:  girl, grasshopper, grapes, goat
H:  hat, helicopter (miniature helicopter of Safari Toob), hammer, horse, hippopotamus, hairbrush

I:  intestine, insect, iguana, igloo
J:  jeep, jewels, jigsaw

K: kimono, koala, key
L:  lamp, leaf, ladle, lid, lion

M:  milk, moon, magnet, motorbike
N:  net, nest, nine, nut

O:  owl, ostrich, orchid, orange, oval
P:  panda, plate, pail, pan, pizza, polar bear

Q:  quetzal, question mark, queen, quarter
R:  rug, rainbow, rooster, rock, rope

S:  snake, saw, snowman, seahorse, star, spider
T:  tree, turtle, teeth, tractor, tiger

U:  ukelele, United States, umbrella
V:  violin, vines, vice, vulture, vacuum

W:  wedding, window
X:  x-ray, xylophone

Y: yellow, yam
Z:  zero, zipper, zigzag, zebra
As you can see most of my items here are from:

• Playmobil Sets
• Lego
• Schleich
• Safari Toobs
• Sylvanian Families
• IWAKO Japanese Erasers (foods)

I collected these through the years, back when we were in Singapore, trips to the Philippines, US and other places.

I’m often asked what age should they start teaching their child about letter sound and using this method.  My advice is that, observe your child and he’ll tell you when.  Each child is different so I can’t totally say when.  Mavi started early, so by 2.5 years, he’s already working with letter sounds very well. To make it clear, Mavi was really into letters at an early age (even before 2years old!).  He memorizes songs and always pretend to read between 1.5 to 2 years old and I never had problems with him learning phonics at that age. In fact as I mentioned earlier, Mavi volunteered to assemble this for me!  Generally, I think this method will work for kids approaching the age of 3 years old.

Now, this is just ONE of the methods I used for early reading.  There are still plenty of activities you can explore with your child, and one that I highly recommend is reading books together everyday.  Make it a habit.  Reading books will give your child the opportunity to enjoy literature, associating words with pictures and eventually phonics!

Hope you enjoyed this post and find it inspiring.  I welcome questions and corrections, so you can leave me a message in the comment section.

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This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

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