Learning the ABC's
Jan 24, 2023
I never taught letter names and I never sang the ABC song. In my Montessori training we learned to say and model the sounds of each letter symbol. We were teaching them the phonetic sounds through a variety of hands on lessons - Sandpaper Letters, sound to object matching, I Spy games, and so forth.
I observed first hand as a teacher, and then later as a parent of Montessori children, how these concrete and multi-sensory activities built children's understanding of how letter sounds can work together. I can't remember exactly when or how, but my children learned the ABC song and the names of letters (not just their sounds) through exposure to everything outside of their Montessori classroom. Just like they quickly began to recognize symbols like McDonalds, Starbucks and Barnes and Noble, they learned how the rest of the world refers to letters.
As Maria Montessori said in Citizen of the World, "Like a sponge these children absorb. It is marvellous, this mental power of the child. Only we cannot teach directly. It is necessary that the child teach himself, and then the success is great."
Go to grooveparenting.com for ways to support your child's pre-literacy development.