As your toddler begins to grow, you wonder how best you can teach him letters and phonics. And it is not always as difficult as it may seem. You can either take your kid to a Montessori school or you can also choose to teach your kid letter sounds at home. You don’t require special skills in order to do that all you need is the knowledge of some simple techniques based on the principles of Montessori.
Toddlers and preschoolers love to play and they learn best through playful activities. Therefore, if you teach them letter sounds through games, they will remember better. Starting with the ones that are simple, you can proceed to more complex phonetic sound games. You can make use of your child’s favourite toy in the game so that he feels more involved. This involvement is very essential because a child feeling detached, won’t yield much from the lessons. His favourite toy or anything else he likes can prove to be of great help in this regard.
How to introduce Letter Sounds and Letters
Your child is growing up and need to be told about letter symbols. Is there a way you can seamlessly do that? Yes, there is. First create a playful ambience for your child and then introduce the letter symbols with their corresponding sounds using Montessori sandpaper letters. Children at this age learn things as they are taught. So, it’s very important that you pronounce each letter sound correctly and clearly.
Following are the Montessori phonics and reading principles that need to be taken into consideration while teaching letter sounds to your kid:
– When you are introducing the sounds, make sure you are using lowercase letters.
-Don’t spend too much time trying to teach your kid letter names. You kid is skilled enough to pick them up later on his or her own. Initially, introducing the letter sounds in a fun filled manner does enough good.
-You can choose to teach the phonetic sounds in any order of your choice; not necessarily the ABC order. The only requirement would be to arrange the order in such a way that your kid finds it easy to follow.
-Always remember that you are to teach the short-vowel sounds first. Once the kid becomes well versed in them, you can start introducing the long-vowel sounds.
-Use sandpaper letters, prepared at home without much pain and expenditure, to introduce letter sounds to your kid. You can also use the Montessori 3-period lesson for this purpose. Use your index and middle fingers while tracing the letters.
– You can take help of Montessori movable alphabets, when it’s time to teach spellings to your kid. These alphabets can also be easily made at home.
Although, all the characteristics of the Montessori method of teaching phonics are popular, the two that stand out, are-
- Proceeding from the concrete to the abstract, and
- Making use of as many senses and learning styles as possible.