If you received a link to this email, your child is working on reading and writing and is just on the cusp of new discoveries in this realm! This is exciting! Every year we have a group of children who are in the middle of this process right as summer comes. If they take a break during the summer, please know that it is not a problem at all. We will pick up when we come back to school. What we do find slows them down is if they learn a completely different way of reading (and particularly writing) over the summer because parents notice the interest and look to satisfy it, but don’t know the path we are following. We thought if we give you a bit of information and tools, you can continue the process in a way that is complimentary to what we do if you are interested.

Again, with the exception of a very few who are really on the cusp of something and we will specifically reach out and ask you to work with them, most of you really can just leave this alone. That said, we know they are excited and you are too, so we are sending each of your children home with a personalized list of where they are and the general handouts below should help you to continue to work with them if they show interest.

Please feel free to watch our Montessori Literacy Minutes by Kristi. These bite sized videos (1-4 minutes long) support each area of reading and writing at home. They have the corresponding handout linked below them (the handouts are also found below this page under attachments).

You could also take a look at our general Literacy Page. Some licenses on materials have expired, but there is still a lot of good stuff!

Both of these pages are from our old Learning at Home Website which we designed for the initial time at home from March to May of 2020, so you will need a password to access the page: login:parents@centennialmontessori.org, password: 2908CMS@

Feel free to click the home button in the top right corner (hard to see) and explore activities for your child during Spring Break, but keep in mind the activities on our Learning at Home website were put in place when in-class learning was not available. We returned in June 2020 in person, and generally do not encourage using Montessori Materials at home. If you find fun activities though, feel free to use them. I’d check out the “specials” page & the Literacy page.

Reading:

The Handouts: I recommend reading the handouts from start to finish to get a sense of the progress of reading and writing. These have so many ideas and examples in them! Your personalized list which you will receive from us will indicate which sounds your child knows and which handout corresponds to their level. It will be good to do some below their level so that find it easy and it builds confidence. They should not feel put on the spot or stretched. Most of these are games, but the first set is so important- even for our fluent readers so please do those regardless. Many are great plane or car games! The beginning games will help even our solid readers have strategies when they approach a word they do not know.

Teaching sounds: Please read and do the “I Spy Game”! (See handout below.) This is such a great way to encourage sound awareness. Children who have a lot of experience with this fly through the sandpaper letters and reading/writing. Sound awareness is so much more important than the symbols themselves! If you are teaching additional sounds, please teach them cursive, lower case and refer to the sound, not letter name. If you give them an example “‘aaa’ like apple”, please make sure to change the example so they do not associate a sound with only one example. We included sound cards which can be cut apart and are fun for “go fetch” games. “Bring me ‘mmmmm’.” We’d prefer that you simply practice the ones they know, but if they are asking for more, a graph of the most frequently used sounds is below (we teach roughly in that order, but since they trace them as they learn them, we do easier ones to trace first (i.e. “e” is easier than “a” in cursive). A list of the sounds we use for each letter is included too. Please make sure to differentiate “i” and “e” and not to add “u” onto the consonants (“p” is correct, “puh” creates problems when they try to spell “pig” and think “p” makes the sound “puh”). (Thanks!)

Puzzle Words: We have included a list of the most frequent words. Some of these are not phonetic and it is fine to show them these words and have them memorize them once they are already reading phonetically.

Writing: I don’t have similar handouts written yet for the mechanics of writing (cognitive process is described in the handouts), but a lot of that is just practice.

Lightness of Touch: Before writing on lined paper, the child’s movements should be flowing and light. Encouraging art work, coloring, writing single letters in sand, chalk, or finger paint is better than practicing writing if they have not yet developed lightness of touch. You can even go to the fabric store and have them lightly feel fabrics with their finger. Note: we prefer not using markers since it does not show variation relating to lightness of touch.

Pencil Grip: I have included a video below to show you how to show them correct pencil grip. Ask them to pick up the end of the pencil the same way they pick up the cylinder block knob (Hold the pencil vertical for them and then help them slide it down. It helps if you demonstrate it first.) This should be corrected immediately if you see incorrect grip- even with crayons or drawing. There are variations, but the thumb, index and middle finger should be the ones controlling the pencil. Anything else should be corrected.

Lowercase Cursive vs Print & Capitals: I included the letters we use and keeping to this will be important (fine to read print, but they should write cursive.) We lose a lot of time changing them back from print and especially capital letters and it really influences their writing. I can give you more information on why cursive, but please know that the choice to teach cursive is very well thought out and makes a lot of sense. Regardless, it is very confusing to a beginning writer if they learn capitals.

Copy Work and Cursive Workbooks: We don’t love cursive workbooks in the Montessori world, but I know a lot of adults don’t remember their cursive letters. Once the children are forming the letters on their own, cursive workbooks are fine for older children (5 and up) if they are having fun with it (the problem comes when it takes away the joy of writing or if their movements are too hesitant or pressure is too hard). Workbooks tend to be written for 3rd grade and above so it may help to take pages to a copy store and enlarge them. Most likely they are way too small for our children. If you do remember cursive, copy work is best for refining writing. Write their favorite poem and then have them write it on a separate paper. .

Note that all of the above is different than the writing they do with invented spelling. At the early stages, let them write without spaces and messy if they are cognitively composing. Copy work helps them separately write nicely.

Again: no need to worry about this. Practice at this stage will help a lot with progress, but only if a child is into it. The love of reading, writing and the language is so much more important. We’d rather see a child happily “reading” a book upside down with invented words and drawing loops for “writing their book" than struggling with decoding a simple text that they learn to hate or spilling tears over making an “s". They will read and write soon- and this way they will do it with joy!

The order of handouts is Phonemic Awareness, Graphophonemic Awareness, The Emerging Reader, Becoming a Confident Reader, Establishing Fluency. (TC uploads them in a random order so they may be out of order below.) The rest are files that are helpful (i.e. frequent words help with order for puzzle words etc.).

If you want more detail, we highly recommend Montessori Read and Write by Lynne Lawrence (now Executive Director of AMI Global and Kristi’s Montessori trainer) for a practical approach with young children and for a more scientific explanation behind how we read, please look up Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read by Stanislas Dehaene. He is not a Montessorian that I know of, but is a neuroscientist whose research seems to give a good rationale for the Montessori approach.

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