Easter Eggs Letter and Number Cards

Our Easter Egg Letter and Number Cards set is now up in our shop, ready for you to enjoy and use in your thematic activities this Lent and Easter season!

Montessori Inspired Blue Series - Learning about Consonant Blends

With Vito reading CVC words and sight words, we are now moving to the Blue Series.  The Blue Series is a Montessori approach in learning consonant blends and digraphs.  I made an entire set of blue series materials for Vito to use in the course of his learning.  We will work on these materials  and move on to the next set as he progresses.  In this post, I will give you an overview of the materials and how we are going to use them.

It is important to note that the blue series (blends and digraphs) comes after the pink series.  Once the child is familiar with letter sounds and can basically read CVC words (pink series) then he/she can move on to the blue series.

Beginning Letter Sound Picture Mats

Here's a fun activity that Vito and I would do to practice identifying objects and their beginning letter sounds.  I usually integrate this in our letter of the week activities or just play it on its own.

Beginning Letter Sound Activity Sheets

Vito’s favourite work in the morning are our pink series cards (we try to work on one vowel sound a week) and these beginning sound activity sheets. I made these cards years ago (just revamped them) and used them with Mavi, it’s one of his favourite language works.  Because Mavi can write letters at 3 years old, we didn’t get to use our moveable alphabet and instead he would just write the missing letters.

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!

Building Words with the Moveable Alphabet and Objects

Vito is 43 months old.

I am so excited to share that we’ve finally started building words using our moveable alphabet!  I had fun working this with Mavi long time ago and I can’t believe I’m doing this again with Vito.  This is the part of Montessori language arts that I love the most, teaching kids how to read! In my previous post, I talked about how we are using objects and miniatures in learning about letter sounds which is essential in reading. 

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.

Beginning Letter Phonics Cards

Hello everyone! I wanted to share with you Vito’s current favourite printable, our Beginning Letter Phonics Cards.  You might have seen these in some of my letter-themed post.  These are card strips which contain letters and their corresponding objects (real images matching the  beginning letter sound).  The product comes in two sets: control cards and the activity cards.  Below is a glimpse of how we use the materials, which Vito would work on every day (sensitive period for letters)!

Montessori Inspired Phonics Mystery Bag Game

Vito is 40 months old.

I’m always in search of new learning games and activities to try with Vito.  Vito is quite a challenge.  He’s a little bit picky with activities, he always wants it to be interesting, some sort of a game.  He is currently in a sensitive period with letters, always singing the song, identifying letters in books, pretending to read words, completing his alphabet puzzles and more.  He knows the letter sounds and can identify uppercase and lowercase, so I’m moving forward to phonics and CVC reading practise in our language activities at home.  To start with, we are practising how to identify beginning letter sounds of “objects” in picture format.  I know, I should be doing objects, but Vito is always distracted with objects.  He sees them as toys, not as language learning materials. We don’t get things done whenever I use objects because we end up playing.  So I’m sticking with picture cards for now, it’s working on his part.  Whenever he sees a picture card, he would name it and emphasize the beginning letter sound.  This was our first try, and we’ve been doing this activity occasionally.  Lately, I acquired an extra tiny bag from my Stereognostic material and I made use of it in this game.  We often use moveable alphabet but Vito insisted to use the Hape Uppercase Puzzle (he loves this puzzle!).

Sorting Game Using Alphabet Sound Cards

Vito is 38 months old.

I am so excited that I finally found a way to keep Vito engaged in the alphabet sorting activity.  You see we always sort out objects according to their letter sound (see it here), but my problem is that Vito is more interested with the objects rather than participating in the activity.  The moment I opened the box for us to sort, he would take away one object at a time and he refuses to do the activity and would play instead.  Now this is fine, I have no problems with it.  In fact, this happened to Mavi too.  I let them play with the objects first but then would ask them to participate in the activity right after.  It was temporary for Mavi, he loved sorting objects according to beginning letters rather than playing with them.  As for Vito, it’s different.  He is still in a stage of being “playful” so our sorting activities are sometimes a struggle.  He knows how to do it, but refuses because of the object.

My solution:  I tried using a printed image instead of the objects and tada, he finished everything in a matter of seconds!  With this, we are going to work on printed materials for now, and maybe mix them with objects occasionally just to test whether he has overcome his obsession with tiny figures.

Montessori Inspired February Activities for Preschoolers

Vito is 39 months old.

Thank goodness January is almost over!  I really don’t like January, it’s that time of the year where we get to experience the worst weather condition.  Fortunately, we have fair weather this year, it’s actually warm!  But, I am so looking forward to spring now, and I can’t wait for all these gloomy days to be over.  And speaking of spring, this month, I’ll start adding “spring” activities into our homeschool activities.  We will be using traditional Montessori materials for most part and in some, we’ll have themed activities.  Hope you like what I prepared for Vito for this month.

Learn to Write Letters for Preschoolers Using Sandpaper Letters

Vito is 36 months old.

Our sandpaper letter set has finally arrived (yehey before Christmas!) and it’s been a favorite ever since!  If you follow me on Instagram, I recently showed a picture of Vito working with Schleich animals and sandpaper letters.  But that’s just one activity we can do with the letters.  The main use of this material is for Vito to use it as a tool in learning how to write alphabet letters.

Language Lessons for Preschoolers: RAMFBITG

Vito is 36 months old.

Vito is currently working hard learning his letters, sounds, and expanding his vocabulary. Due to weather constraint we are mostly stuck at home, therefore the lack of outdoor nature studies. So our mornings are mostly spent for his “homeschool”.  We are busy reading books, learning letters, doing writing, and practical life activities.

In this post, I would like to share Vito’s language lessons which you can try in your homes as well.  Remember my post on booklets?  I mentioned in the post that at home we’re learning letters and their sounds in groups (color coded).  First group is RAMF-BITG, second is CUSN-POLH and lastly DEXQY-WXZKVJ.  This idea came from My Montessori Journey, one of my favourite blogs dated back in 2010.  Read more about this grouping here.

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. 

Beginning Sounds Through Language Objects

This week, Vito and I are exploring beginning letter sounds through objects we can find at home.  This is very similar to the Alphabet Sort Montessori Inspired activity, but in our case we are not sorting the objects yet.  What Vito and I are doing is to just  name or identify the objects and match them to our control sheet.

Object Baskets for I to P

** contains affiliate links **

This object basket series has been a popular post and I’m glad that it gave so much inspiration to all Moms and homeschoolers.  Before the year ends, I’m sharing with you our second set of the object baskets and this includes letters I to P.  But before you dig into this post, I suggest that you read the first part of this series to understand what it is for and how we use them at home for learning.

Object Baskets I to L

I Basket: foam letter , upper and lowercase letter, iguana, insects, ice, island 

J Basket: foam letter, upper and lowercase letter, jeans, jigsaw puzzle, jug

K Basket: foam letter, upper and lowercase letter, kangaroo,  knife, keys

L Basket: foam letter, upper and lowercase letter, leaves, lion, lemon, DIY sandpaper letter

 

Object Baskets I to L

M Basket: foam letter, upper and lowercase letter, medicine, monster, monkey, DIY moon

N Basket: foam letter, upper and lowercase letter, nuts, nine, DIY sandpaper letter, necktie

O Basket: foam letter, upper and lowercase letter, owl, orange, oval, DIY sandpaper letter

P Basket: foam letter, upper and lowercase letter, pig, pens, paint, DIY sandpaper letter

This is my guide for next year’s activities on learning letters.  This will be fun!

For letters A to H, click the images below:

    

 

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Montessori Grammar Lesson

At home, we’re using the Montessori approach in teaching the English grammar.

Below are some of the materials we used:  grammar symbols, grammar booklet, strips of papers and Sharpies.  The symbols are made from foam crafts which I painstakingly form and cut.

Instead of grammar farm, we used Legos and animal figures set-up in an Arctic/Antarctic Expedition.  From here, I made Mavi identify the nouns.

I made this definition cards for his guide.

 

We created the sentences based on our set-up and Mavi labeled each word using a grammar symbol.   

And I made him work the other way around, Mavi creating a sentence using the symbol sequence I made.

Surprisingly, he enjoyed this activity.  He enjoys identifying the correct grammar symbol and loves creating sentences.  We will be doing much of this work and as he progresses, I’ll introduce adverbs, conjunction, pronoun, interjection and preposition.

More activities here Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Language on Pinterest.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!

Homemade Grammar Symbols

I finally made our grammar symbols!  So proud of how it turned out. I was on the edge of purchasing the wooden version but they were quite pricey.  Though the paper version was a good alternative but I wanted something durable so I decided to make my own using the foam crafts. 

Can't wait to use them!

Working on Green Series

This month we are doing Montessori Green Series. The pictures and labels you see on the picture was taken from The Helpful Garden.  We are using our moveable alphabets, and I also created some materials similar to our Blue Series (List).