Introducing the Montessori Pink Series for Beginning Reading

I've talked about Vito’s sensitive years for letters in my Instagram account.  Since September, he’s been into letter sounds, identifying beginning letter sounds, sorting objects according to sound, making rhymes, forming words, pretending to read and deciphering words etc. so I decided to give him a “structured” activity on alphabets.  Here’s what we have been doing so far:

1. Five in a Row activities that are tied to a letter
2. A letter of the week kind of activity to go along with a holiday or season (letter l and letter a)
3. Reading lots of books
4. After learning a letter, we would read and create his own phonics booklet

During the course of these activities, I observed that he would try to decipher a word, or pretend to create words using sticky tapes, in writing and using our moveable alphabet.  Plus, he knows 90% of the letter sounds (though he's still confused with c and k).  With the signs, I knew he would be ready for the Montessori Pink Series.  And oh boy, it was the best decision I made!

Amy of The Wonder Years have a thorough discussion of what the Montessori Pink Series is all about, but in a nutshell, it is the first step in reading practise as it introduces the easiest words: CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant).  Here’s a summary of activities for the Pink Series method:

1. Objects and Moveable Letters.
2. Picture cards and moveable letters.
3. Matching objects with word cards.
4. Matching picture cards with word cards.  The cards that we are using here are from my shop.  **An extension work I prepared for Vito here is identifying the beginning, middle and ending sounds through these activity sheets.  This has been Mavi’s favourite work when he was 4 years old and I can’t wait to introduce this to Vito.  I revamped the materials, provided it with beautiful high quality pictures and is now available in the shop if you want to save time in producing these worksheets.
5. Word Lists
6. Matching sentence cards with picture cards
7. Booklets
8. Secret Words

I did all of these with Mavi.  Yes, a lot of work especially if you research and make all of the materials (which I like to do!) but it was all worth-it.

With Vito, here’s what we have accomplished so far:

Objects and Moveable Letters

Picture cards and Moveable letters

We’ve done this a couple of times and he can easily form the words using the letters.  Because he knows most of the letter sounds, and the words used here are phonetics, so he can easily sound the words and create them.

We’re working on one vowel at a time.  Here you see that we’re working with CVC words having a vowel ‘a’.  After we have done all the vowels, we will work on CVC words with mix vowel sounds next.

Note though that Vito is quite overwhelmed with the organization of the letters in the box.  I got this trick from a Montessori mom on Instagram wherein she just sorts out the letters currently used and separate them from the entire moveable set.  This way, the child doesn’t need to go through the entire sections of the tray looking for the correct letter.  Based on my observations for both of my boys, they get frustrated looking for the letters and in effect I end up pointing the correct letters. So with this trick of separating the letters to be used, they will only get to choose among fewer letters rather than the 26.  (This trick only applies to younger children)

Another good thing about the pink series (or the green and the blue) is that the child is exposed to a lot of new words and vocabulary.  Here he was intrigued by the picture of the gum and wanted to know more about it.

Once we completed forming the words, we “read” the words again by making the phonetic sounds of the letter and doing the “blend” so we can say the word. Here Vito is reading the word “sun”.

Matching objects with word cards

This usually comes once the child is familiar with the “blending” of phonetic sounds and is confident enough to decipher the words.  He was not supposed to do this yet, but he saw our cards and wanted to “read” the words.  I told him to try reading by making the phonetic sounds written in the cards.  There was a few hit but a lot of miss.  But he managed to read words like the bus and sun without me giving him hints.

He ended up matching the words to the moveable alphabet instead.

EXTENSION WORK

As I mentioned earlier, we will be working with these sheets side by side with our pink series cards.  Here’s a poor man’s version I made in 2012 with Mavi and it has been one of his favourite language activities.

Mavi can write at 3 years old so we didn’t get to use magnetic or moveable alphabets with these sheets.

I revamped these worksheets and they are now available in my shop for purchase.  Click on the links below for the details:

With the materials prepared, I hope that the learning process for Vito will go smoothly until he’s finally able to read!

Hope this post provides enough information for you to start your own reading activities with your child.  If you have more questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I will try my best to get back to you the soonest!