Hellobee

Somewhere between the ages of three to four years old most children will start to learn their ABCs! Some children will learn earlier and some later.

The Montessori approach to literacy begins with learning letters phonetically. This means the child learns ‘a’ not ‘A.’ They learn the sound of the letter, not the name of the letter.

We love using the book Montessori Letter Work which contains textured letters, however I also wanted to make some of our own materials. Using some free online downloads I made these little books. My son loved them. I printed them on card, punched some holes and put them together with hinged rings. I made one book per letter and I put 3-4 books at a time in a basket on his work shelves. He would sit down and flip through the books or we would read them together.

I also made an Alphabet Box. This was a huge hit. I used two containers and filled them with little items and toys I found around the house. I used lots of little items from Playmobil and Lego. Each space in the box was allocated to one letter. ‘b’ for example had a butterfly, bear, bike, button. ‘c’ had a coin, cat, carrots, cube. I left out x and z because I didn’t have enough space, but also didn’t have many items for those letters.

With our Alphabet Box we sit down together and go through the items and play lots of phonetic awareness games.

One of the games we play is to fill in our alphabet chart.

At home we always keep our literacy and letter work really fun and lighthearted. Sometimes it may only last five minutes, but it’s a great way to incorporate a little learning into our day!