Overview of the Montessori Reading Program

The Montessori method enables through specially designed materials for the Language Area, a motor memory along with a visual memory of the letters of the alphabet. Sensations, perceptions and speech are established in this area. Sensations of sight and touch associated with the sounds of the alphabet, the associations between sound and symbol and pronounciation of the alphabet.

Sandpaper letters

For the Language Curriculum Area I did not include lesson plans or activities for a very simple reason; the Montessori materials for language development were designed for Latin alphabet-based languages. Yet, Montessori education programs are present in many cultures and languages around the world. As never before schools today have growing numbers of bilingual or multilingual children. Accordingly, exercises and activities for the Language Development Area should be carefully chosen, designed, evaluated for suitability by the respective school, program, directress in the country or language in which Montessori education is offered.

Language insets

The real dificulty is in the interpretation of the graphic signs; but we must remember that we are in the age of perceptions, where the sensations and the memory as well as the primitive associations are involved precisely in the characteristic progress of natural development. Moreover our children are already prepared by various exercises of the senses, and by methodical construction of ideas and mental associations to perceive the graphic signs; something like a patrimony of perceptive ideas offers material to the language in the process of development. The child who recognizes a triangle and calls it a triangle can recognize a letter S and denominate it by the sound S."
Maria Montessori - The Montessori Method,ch.XIII. Language in Childhood.

Alef Beth Letter Recognition