Beginning Reading: Language Objects and Activities

Language activities are a favourite in the house now as Vito’s interest in reading has peaked. We are using language objects more often to practise letter sounds through games (aside from sandpaper letters). These language objects that we have were collected through the years, starting from Mavi’s time and it has been very useful now in Vito’s journey on beginning reading.

Important notes in this journey:

We started with sound games when Vito was around 2.5 years old. I used two to three objects and I called them Object Baskets then.
I used this book as a guide on how to say the sounds correctly.
When Vito loses interest, I would stop giving the activity and then reintroduce it again after a few weeks.
We also do sound games during our walks and long drives (he actually loves this!).
I used printed materials for sound games when he was distracted with miniature objects. You can check how we did it in this post, Alphabet Sorting Game.

LANGUAGE OBJECTS

Now that Vito is very much familiar with the game, I started giving him miniature objects again a few weeks ago to see if he’s not distracted anymore. You see, the first time I gave him language objects, he wasn’t even interested in the game but rather wanted to just play with the objects, throw them around or mouthed them. He was just interested in naming the objects but not interested in the sound. This is the reason why I kept the objects for awhile and used printed materials instead.

Going back, for the past few days he seem to be enjoying our sound games. I would give him 8 to 10 objects, and he would happily participate. His favourite is the “I Spy with my little eye something beginning with rrrrr” etc. During the “I Spy” the objects that we are using doesn’t have similar sounds, meaning all are starting with different letters. We would do this almost everyday, and I would change the objects every two days.

SANDPAPER LETTERS AND LANGUAGE OBJECTS

Another activity that Vito and I would do is using sandpaper letters (How To Use the Montessori Sandpaper Letters) with the language objects. Basically, it’s matching the letter sounds using the sandpaper letters to our language objects. That’s Vito tracing the letters first before matching the language objects.

I’m following Montessori Journey’s grouping of letters. We started with ‘ramf-bitg’ and next week we’ll be working with ‘cusn-polh’. That’s Vito making the “a” sound for ant.

Since this is our first time to match sandpaper letters to language objects I only prepared two objects for each letter so he won’t be overwhelmed. I have the following:

r – rock, rainbow

a – ant, anchor

m – moon, magnet

f – fish, fire

Here’s the second set which we worked on the other day:

b – basket, butterfly

i – igloo, insect

t – table, turtle

g – goat, guitar

MOVEABLE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE OBJECTS

And lastly, we also use the moveable letters as we transition to reading. It is advised that you introduce moveable letters when your child is already familiar with letter sounds (Sound Games) and should be able to know three quarters of the letters. In his activity, we are not yet forming words, but using the letters to match with the objects as I let Vito familiarize with the moveable alphabet. I used this before with our Alphabet Sound Card Strips (check how we use them here, Beginning Letter Phonics Cards), and now we transitioned to real objects (we still use the cards of course). Again, I suggest that you start with a small amount of object and add as the child progress.