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AGE 3-6+ LANGUAGE:
Introduction
Language of the child's world
Vocabulary cards—speaking stage
Experience first
Pre-reading and writing
"I spy" game
Reading and writing
Vocabulary cards—reading
Books
Exploring language
Reprinted from:
Child of the World, Essential Montessori for Age three to Twelve
ISBN: 1-879264-011-0
LANGUAGE OF THE CHILD'S WORLD
The most important specific vocabulary words,
and the most useful to the child, are the names of the everyday objects
in her home environment—clothing, kitchen objects, tools, toys, and
so forth. Your child will be thrilled to know the names and to be able to
use them correctly. All we need to do is to use the correct names, and the
precise language for everyday objects and activities, in the presence of
the child. Then eventually, as she joins us more and more in conversation,
the words of the child's environment will be there.
EXPERIENCE FIRST
In any good language environment, in as many situations
as possible, the teacher makes sure that experience precedes vocabulary
and pictures of objects. She will introduce real vegetables before vegetable
cards, real actions before verb cards, real music before composer picture
and labels, real shells before shell cards, and so on. At home parents
can do the same thing—show the kitchen objects, the office or bathroom
objects, and then give the opportunity to handle these objects and to
learn the names. In this way the child learns that language is connected
to the real world.
VOCABULARY CARDS - SPEAKING
If you ever visit a Montessori classroom you will notice
that there are many vocabulary books and cards. It is natural that, during
this intense interest in words, children be given pictures of everything—to
practice and improve their new abilities. These books and cards are valuable
for the home. There are many selections in The Joyful Child, Essential
Montessori for 0-3 appropriate for this age. For information on this publication,
see page 97.
THE VOCABULARY OF THE
WIDER ENVIRONMENT
There is a rich and
enjoyable vocabulary, and an interesting introduction to the structure
of English available in poems, finger plays, songs, fables, stories, and
even great literature that we can give to children of this age. There
is only so much time in a day for reading to children so we should make
the best of these times by providing the best in literature and nonfiction
that we can find.
Even in these early years, we give the language as we present the objects
and activities which lay the foundation for many future academic studies.
As you look through the pages of Child of the World you will find many
opportunities for enriching experience and vocabulary. We can give the
correct names for the toys a child plays with, the colors and shapes of
blocks, the parts of a broom or mop, activities such as wash, sweep, pound,
pour; adjectives such as hot and cold, loud and soft; in the Earth section
the names of the planets, rocks and continents, or the parts of the electric
circuit; in the Plant and Animal sections the names of flowers, the fruits
and vegetables of the home, the colors of leaves in the fall, shells,
fossils, animals of all kinds, and dinosaur models; in the People section
the names of flags, coins, vehicles, famous people, countries and states;
in the Music and Art sections the names of musical instruments of the
world, famous paintings, artists and musician; and in the math section
plane and solid shapes, counting systems in several languages, measurement
terms. And this is just the beginning. Look around your own home and classroom
for the elements that make your particular environments unique, and find
the objects, activities, and vocabulary that you can share with children.
PRE-READING AND WRITING
Pre-Reading and Writing
There are three main areas where we can help children prepare for reading
and writing. When the ground is well prepared over the years before reading
and writing is attempted, acquiring these skills is very enjoyable.
(1) Physical skills—balance, using the hands, coordination of eye-hand
work, learning to concentrate and focus, recognizing sizes and shapes,
working with knobbed puzzles, crayons and pencils, and practice in speaking.
(2) Mental skills—absorbing and using language, learning the "sounds"
that each letter makes (not the 'names' of the letter) and playing games
to break up words into sounds—the "I spy" game.
(3) Social—living in homes where people talk at the table, sit down
and have conversations, and read, instead of watching television or "learning
language" on a computer.
THE "I SPY"
GAME
When your child has built up a knowledge
of the names of objects by pictures, introduce the I Spy Game. Pick up
an object, a ball. Say "I spy something in my hand that begins with
b." (make the shortest b sound, not the sound of the name of the
letter bee)." Do this with several objects, maybe the same ones for
weeks. Eventually you can use pictures for this game as well.
Later go on to sound out the ending sound "Something that begins
with p and ends with n" (pen), and finally the whole word.
This is similar to spelling, but we say isolated sounds, not letters.
Lamb would be sounded out as l-a-m. We are not teaching spelling, or reading,
we are helping the child become aware of the sounds of language, and having
fun, both very important for learning language. You will be amazed at
the ability of a child to later decode words when he has had this game
as preparation.
READING AND WRITING
Children should never be forced to read and write at a
young age. But the tools to do so, when offered and their use shown, prepare
and inspire many to read. This is the sensitive period in a child's life
for knowing the names of everything, including the sounds of letters,
and for touching and feeling. So we offer letters made of sandpaper to
trace with their fingers while saying the sound.
Children often spontaneously "explode" into writing, which naturally
appears several months before reading.
Since 99% of written language is in lower case letters, you will be doing
the child a favor to begin with these ("a" and "b,"
not "A" and "B"), and with the sounds instead of the
names of the letters.
To meet the child's need to touch and feel, and to learn the names of
objects in the environment, we use sandpaper letters. The child feels
and says the sound, repeating many times. The traditional sandpaper letters
used in the 3-6 class are very sturdy and expensive, but it is possible
to make some at home, or for the child to trace letters in corn meal or
sand.
For those who were not ready physically to write with a pencil, but who
were mentally ready, Dr. Montessori prepared cutout movable letters for
their work. Similar movable alphabets are still used in schools today.
Above all, this work must be offered in a spirit of enjoyment and not
imposed. Adults really have to forget the tedious process they might have
gone through to learn to read, and to approach it in a spirit of fun and
ease.
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INTRODUCTION
The most important preparation of the environment
for successful development of spoken and written language in the child
is the language environment of the home. It is never too early to speak
clearly and precisely to the child. In fact the language of the caregivers
in the first six years of life will literally form the spoken language
of the child. Reading aloud to the child gives the message that reading
is fun for everyone, and concepts and vocabulary words will be experienced
which would never come up in spoken language.
Reading and writing should not be taught to a child before
age six or seven, but, given the sensorial experiences of appropriate
materials a child of normal intelligence will quite naturally teach herself
to read and write sometimes as early as three or four years of age.
Here is a quote from Dr. Montessori about her experience
in the first Casa dei Bambini, "house of children," in Rome in the beginning
of this century:
Ours was a house for children,
rather than a real school. We had prepared a place for children where
a diffused culture could be assimilated from the environment, without
any need for direct instruction . . . Yet these children learned to read
and write before they were five, and no one had given them any lessons.
At that time it seemed miraculous that children of four and a half should
be able to write, and that they should have learned without the feeling
of having been taught.
We puzzled over it for a long
time. Only after repeated experiments did we conclude with certainty that
all children are endowed with this capacity to absorb culture. If this
be true—we then argued—if culture can be acquired without effort,
let us provide the children with other elements of culture. And then we
saw them absorb far more than reading and
writing: botany, zoology, mathematics, geography, and all with the same
ease, spontaneously and without getting tired.
And so we discovered that education
is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process
which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by
listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts
on his environment. The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare
and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment
made for the child.
My experiments, conducted in
many different countries, have now been going on for forty years (ed.
Now ninety-plus years), and as the children grew up parents kept asking
me to extend my methods to the later ages. We then found that individual
activity is the one factor that stimulates and produces development, and
that this is not more true for the little ones of preschool age than it
is for the junior, middle and upper school children.
— Dr. Maria Montessori, MD, from The Absorbent Mind
It is no accident that some children are good at reading
and writing and others are not, that some find joy in this work and for
others it is tedious. The preparation for enjoying the exploration of
language in life begins before birth as the child responds to the voices
he hears even in the womb.
For success in language a child needs confidence that
what she has to say is important, a desire to relate to others, real experience
on which language is based, and the physical abilities necessary in reading
and writing. There are several things that we can do to help.
We can listen and talk to the child from birth on, not
in baby talk, but with respect and with a rich vocabulary. We can provide
a stimulating environment, rich in sensorial experiences and in language,
providing a wealth of experience, because language is meaningless if it
is not based on experience. We can set an example and model precise language
in our everyday activities with the child. If we share good literature,
in the form of rhymes, songs, poetry and stories we will greatly increase
the child's love of language.
VOCABULARY CARDS - READING
When a child first begins to recognize the sounds
of letters in groups—words—he is doing this silently in his
head. Saying these words aloud complicates the process, especially if
someone is listening. So a child is not asked to read aloud in the beginning.
To provide practice with this new, exciting single-word skill, give the
child pictures and labels for objects for which he already knows the names.
He reads each label and matches it to the picture. Then, if the names
of the objects have been written on the back of the picture cards, the
child can turn the pictures over to see if he has placed the labels correctly.
Children love reading and checking their own work and will repeat over
and over again till they get it exactly right. Hundreds of meaningful
words can be added to the child's reading vocabulary in this way.
Just as with giving spoken vocabulary, the most important words to give
the child when beginning to read are the labels of the common objects
in the home. Then other familiar vocabulary.
READING BOOKS
There are many good nonfiction books for the early
reader throughout this publication, and just as children at this age love
to learn the names of real things in the environment, they love to learn
about the real world through books. Books which have been read to them
often can sometimes make the best first reading books
.EXPLORING LANGUAGE
Children love grammar. It is so exciting
to realize that words written on a slip of paper can tell a child which
object to choose, or that some words (verbs) mean to DO something, like
"smile," "hop," or "sit." Children love
to enact them for each other and guess what the word says.
If we help our children with the physical preparation of the body and
hands, listen carefully to our children when they talk to us, set an example
of loving to read, and approach giving our children language with the
same spirit of fun with which we play other games, we will be doing the
most important things to prepare for a successful life of reading and
writing.
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© Copyright Michael Olaf, 2004
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