Language Arts

LANGUAGE ARTS

The Language Curriculum teaches reading and writing. The Montessori Method is one of the only educational methods that encourages pre-writing and pre-reading. Readiness for writing begins with Practical Life and continues through with tracing metal insets. Letter formation is introduced once the child can hold a pencil properly and shows an interest in writing. Tracing sandpaper letters gives children the sensorial training for letter formation. This tactile learning experience has proven to be a successful way to begin writing with young children.

The Moveable Alphabet provides a means for children to create their own words. Color coding letters to differentiate vowels (blue) and consonants (red) isolates the difficulty for building letters into words. An example is that every word needs a vowel; hence, at least one blue letter. Sight words are written in black so the child automatically knows it is a sight word and cannot be sounded out. Formal reading begins with simple short readers and continues with workbooks and story writing.