If you remember full-group spelling lessons in your elementary school, it may be hard to imagine how language can be taught in classrooms in which every child is working at his own pace and on materials appropriate for him. The Montessori language materials are elegant examples of the qualities essential to all Montessori materials: they are simple, self-correcting, beautiful and isolating a single concept. As such, they are able to make the complicated rules of written langu

We know that part of our work as Montessori teachers is to observe children. We observe to understand their development, that we may better prepare for that development in the materials and lessons we offer in the environment. Before we introduce writing as a lesson, we need to observe the child’s physical and intellectual development for signs of alignment. That is to say, each new lesson should be aligned to the observations we’ve made of the child to whom we’re offering it

Once children have begun to write letters, they are quickly motivated to apply that knowledge to useful, meaningful activities. But a child who wants to write a lot may not yet have the attention span or endurance to write for long. It falls, then, to the creative Montessori teacher to identify opportunities for children to write things that are important to them, without overwhelming them with more writing than they may be able to complete. Enter the nomenclature cards. The

Just as the Montessori classroom allows ample practice for the physical skills children will need to master holding a pencil, we also offer practice for the discernment skills children will need to remember and replicate the shapes of letters. Throughout the classroom, integrated into lessons across the curriculum, you'll find opportunities for children to develop the hand-eye coordination, the fine motor control and the visual discrimination they'll need when they first begi

In the complicated web of Montessori materials, we see basic skills reinforced across multiple domains and through various activities. Especially in the essential coordination of fine and gross motor skills, Montessori materials embed meaningful opportunities for practice across the classroom, from carrying simple trays to balancing cumbersome buckets of water, from grasping large knobs to managing tiny tweezers. While we seek to support children's developing coordination of

Just as the Montessori classroom allows ample practice for the physical skills children will need to master holding a pencil, we also offer practice for the discernment skills children will need to remember and replicate the shapes of letters. Throughout the classroom, integrated into lessons across the curriculum, you'll find opportunities for children to develop the hand-eye coordination, the fine motor control and the visual discrimination they'll need when they first begi

Do you remember learning grammar in Elementary school? Did you memorize the definition of a noun (" a person, place, thing or idea,") separate from any real application? Did you learn that a verb was an "action word?" For many of us, grammar was something we learned by itself, distinct from the books we wanted to read or the stories we wanted to write. But grammar isn't its own thing-- it's a representation of the rules most children enact all the time. As children learn thei

If you remember full-group spelling lessons in your elementary school, it may be hard to imagine how language can be taught in classrooms in which every child is working at his own pace and on materials appropriate for him. The Montessori language materials are elegant examples of the qualities essential to all Montessori materials: they are simple, self-correcting, beautiful and isolating a single concept. As such, they are able to make the complicated rules of written langu

We know that part of our work as Montessori teachers is to observe children. We observe to understand their development, that we may better prepare for that development in the materials and lessons we offer in the environment. Before we introduce writing as a lesson, we need to observe the child’s physical and intellectual development for signs of alignment. That is to say, each new lesson should be aligned to the observations we’ve made of the child to whom we’re offering it

Once children have begun to write letters, they are quickly motivated to apply that knowledge to useful, meaningful activities. But a child who wants to write a lot may not yet have the attention span or endurance to write for long. It falls, then, to the creative Montessori teacher to identify opportunities for children to write things that are important to them, without overwhelming them with more writing than they may be able to complete. Enter the nomenclature cards. The