Beginning Language Activities.

Language is everywhere. It includes verbal speaking, and also facial expressions, body language, and non-verbal signals. Without Language we wouldn’t be able to communicate our thoughts, our feelings, or our needs. Maria Montessori observed that the potential exists for children to develop the higher language skills of reading and writing with almost the same ease with which they acquire oral speech. This “explosion” happens in the primary years if children are presented with the appropriate tools and experiences. 

Between 0-3 months, a child is auditive, meaning they’ll turn at the sound of someone’s voice. At four months, they’ll look intensely at a speaking mouth. Around six months, they’ll begin to repeat the same syllable over and over. At ten months, they become conscious that language has meaning and around one year old, they’ll speak their first intentional word. Between 12 and 15 months, they’ll begin to mimic words and around 18 months, they’ll begin to use nouns and phrases without proper grammar. Around two years old, they’ll begin to expand their vocabulary using prefixes, suffixes, verbs, conjunctions, conjugations, adverbs — this is known the explosion epoch. 

Lots of times when a parent observes a child go through this explosion into speech, they immediately jump to teaching them letters! Who wouldn’t!? It seems like the next logical step: speak, read, write. But, actually, visual preparation and pre-reading skills are most necessary to prepare a child for the skill of reading. Not singing the ABCs. Not flashcards. Not “this is A, this is B, this is C” drill work. AND, in Montessori, we actually learn to write before we read! But — if you aren’t teaching your child letters… then what can you do with them? 

Beginning language activities, of course! I’m going to share a whole bunch of ideas down below. The age in which you start doing these activities with your child will vary on your child. My son was ready right at 2 years old, my middle child was closer to 3. You can always try something, gauge their interest level, and save it for another day if it doesn’t work out!

Here are some ideas:

Matching Cards: Three part matching cards are big in Montessori! This is when you have a card with a picture (a mute card), a card with the picture’s name (a label), and a card with both the picture and name (a control card.) You can make 3-part cards for anything! It’s a great way to introduce vocabulary. You can make 3-part cards for meal time, and have pictures of a fork, a spoon, a knife, a plate and a bowl. You can make 3-part cards of animals! Or family members! Or vehicles! 

The way you present these cards to non-readers is to lay out the control card on the left, then match the mute card to the right of the control card, and then you’d model reading the label and lay it below the mute card. Just like in the picture below. (When you use these with a reading child, you’d do it opposite: first lay out the mute card on the left, the child would read the written label and place it below the mute card, and then check the work by matching the control card to the mute card and the label.)

Sequence matching: A lot of people think of matching as a one time deal. Do it once and be done. But in fact, there are many ways to match things! There are many reasons why this is so important. The main reason being that children need to learn to notice small differences in pictures so that they can recognize small differences in letters! For example, d and p and q and b all look very similar! But practice and help training their eyes to identify the small differences that separate them from each other, actually prepares the eyes (and brain) for reading! Here’s a Montessori sequence for matching:

– Object to object: A basket of household objects works really well for this: 2 spoons, 2 bowls, and so on. You can also do a basket of similar but slightly different objects like socks! Matching socks is a sequencing activity AND a practical life work. Just a quick note to say that the reason objects are first (rather than just pictures) is because children this age are in their sensitive period for small objects! So, try not to skip this step! Your child will LOVE handling small objects but of course, be mindful if they still mouth objects.

– Object to picture: These are easy to find online, but very easy to make, too! Just snap some pictures of objects you already have and then print them out. Put the pictures with their corresponding objects in a basket or on a tray and it’s ready to be matched.

– Picture to picture: So simple and SO important. Remember these activities are meant to make comparisons and decisions in determining similarities and differences. I like to pick a theme so the pictures are pretty similar and children really have to look to see what is different.

– Same size pictures: These can be tricky just because it takes a bit of effort to do! But the idea is you take a picture of an object you have (say a spoon, or a TOOB animal) and print it out the same exact size as the object. 

– Large and small pictures: This is a favorite! I like to include a magnifying glass because it sparks a bit more curiosity and excitement.

– Color to black and white: I’ve done this with family photos! Just print off a few color versions and a few black and white versions of some photos and then your child can spend time matching them. 

– Picture to silhouette: These are incredibly easy to find online! A quick google search and you’ll be able to find something that your child is interested in: animals, vehicles, dinosaurs, etc. 

– Picture to outline: This is just what it sounds like! You can take it a step further by adding a few different variations where the outline is thicker or thinner.

– Pattern matching: You can use objects for this or printables. They are SO easy to find online (or even to make super quickly.) 

– Whole to part: This is when you offer a whole picture and then the picture they match it to isolates a small portion of the whole picture. I’ll link something here because I don’t have a photo of it!

– Top half to bottom half: This is exactly what it sounds like! You print a few photos, cut them in half and have your child match them together. Here are similar variations (side by side, diagonal, etc.)

– Different views of one item: This means having one picture of the front of a car, and then one of the side of the same car. Or a picture of a sneaker, from different angles. 

Sequencing: Along with matching activities, you can begin sequencing activities! These can be made or bought and it’s best if the sequence has at least four cards showing the progression over time — like the growth of a flower, or the process of building a snowman. When showing these activities the question you want to ask is “what happens first”, then “what happens next?” 

Rhyming: Rhyming teaches children how language works. It helps them discover sounds within words and they learn to anticipate the rhyming word. This prepares them to make predictions when they read eventually! It’s fun if you have objects that rhyme but if you don’t, printed pictures of rhyming words work well, too. I actually find the best time to play this game is in the car! We often play “can you think of a word that rhymes with…” and pick something like red, or dog, or tree. It’s always fun when they give me a word like… orange!

Nursery rhymes and Dr. Seuss books are so great for rhyming too because eventually you’ll be reading the rhyme, and if you quiet your voice toward the end of each sentence, your child will typically (and with practice) say the rhyming word pretty easily and excitedly. Rhyming is pleasing to the ear!

I spy: When your child experiences their explosion into language, they’ll have a lot of words. So, you can always start pointing out the SOUNDS in the words. This game works best if you have 4 or 5 objects in front of you: think TOOB objects, or even food items, craft supplies — it doesn’t matter as long as your child knows what each object is called AND as long as each object begins with a different sound. So, don’t have a banana and a boat, for example. 

You’ll start by collecting items — let’s pretend a toy car, a banana, a dog figurine and a lego piece and say all these item names out loud. Then you’ll say “I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with…” and then you want to say the letter’s sound — NOT the letter’s name. So, if you’re looking at a banana, you’d say /b/ (sound) and NOT B (name.) Your child might not get it the first time so you’d introduce the names of the objects again and emphasize the beginning sound as you repeat the activity.

Eventually you’ll be able to play this game in different variations like ending sounds, and even trickier — middle sounds!

We play this game a lot while we’re waiting for snack, using the bathroom, in the bathtub, driving in the car. It’s very fun because there’s always so much to look at and look for and children love the back and forth of the game aspect. If you have more than one child, but someone who isn’t ready to play I spy with sounds, on their turn you can ask them to find something “red” or “big”. They’ll love it!

Syllable games: Another game you can play is to break down the parts of a word. Pick a word like basket, and clap for each part: bas/ket. That’s two claps. Watermelon is wa/ter/mel/on. That’s four claps. I do this all day long and especially if it’s a tricky word that someone isn’t say correctly. Slowing down and clapping for each part of the word always helps — plus children love to clap!

If clapping is too hard and children still aren’t understanding (they are just aimlessly clapping) the parts of the word you can suggest they place their hand on their chin while they say the word. Every time their chin drops is a syllable! So when you say “basket”, the chin drops twice. When you say “watermelon”, the chin drops four times. This works for nearly all words — especially words children this age will be using!

So — I hope you can see that there are so many activities you can do with your child once they are talking but before they learn the letters of the alphabet! All of these build up a child’s phonemic awareness skills and research shows that phonemic awareness is the strongest indicator for a child’s success at reading. Learning sounds and rhymes and syllables — knowing how to break down the sounds in a word and the parts in a word is what children need. Letters themselves are pretty confusing for a child and there’s no reason (or hurry) to introduce children to letter symbols and letter names. This is phonics and it comes later — much later!

Have any questions? I’d love to answer them!