Our language boxes

As I promised, here is a more detailed post about our language boxes.

I divided each box by groups:

• Box #1- Letters SMAT
• Box #2-Letters BEFG
• Box #3-Letters DNIR
• Box #4-Letters HCOP
• Box #5-Letters JLQUW
• Box #6-Letters YKVXZ

Why am I introducing the letters in this order?

I think you can read an EXCELLENT post about this question here at Living Montessori now. As you will see there are different orders, I did mine following a Curriculum sheet I had (which I can’t find anymore). Also I took into consideration that my daughter’s name starts with letter M….this was our first letter! Here is another post from My Montessori Journey about the order.

For the boxes labels, I used this one by My Montessori Journey! (Changed it a little bit)

What’s inside the boxes? (Mine are 6 re-usable baby wipes boxes)

• Sandpaper letters- I made ours. Here’s the post about that. I just put the one we’ll be using for each box.
• Picture cards- I have been looking so hard for the source from which I got our pictures but sorry I can’t find it! However, here are some from My Montessori Journey, and from Montessori Materials. Here at The Joy of Learning you can find an useful list of words plus a detailed way of how you can do the activity. I had to make some vowels picture cards which you can find here. What I did is put them on snack Ziploc bags, so I have 4 bags, each with a set of pictures plus their beginning sound letter. We talk about the pictures, put them on line, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, etc…and sing…This last one is our favorite one! In this website, Mrs. Jones Room, they have different songs that you can sing for each letter but we love the song for short letter A with the tune of London Bridge (we use it for every letter, simple for my toddler!). Furthermore, we mix all the picture cards and Pinky tell me what’s the picture, what’s the beginning sound and classify it under the corresponding letter; it seems like a lot but she does it very good and we stop as soon as she starts to lose interest. 

Here is Pinky singing her beginning sound song (Soooo cute!)  

 
• Our sound books- This idea is from My Montessori Journey and I found some free books from Kidzone, I just needed to make the ones for the vowels.        

• Objects- We had just 3 objects for each letter, plus a magnetic upper and lowercase letter, all in 4 different Ziploc snack bags. Our objects are small toys we had already around the house. I just put 3 in each bag following my daughter: I want to keep her interested enough to don’t get bored….she’s just 32 months old and get distracted easily!) I added the words on pieces of index cards. I read the words for her pointing to the letters and let her matched with the object. Also she just love to play with them.                                              

How long are we planning to stay with each box?

I am planning to stay for two weeks with each box. Pinky knows already all her letters (upper/lower) and their sounds (sometimes mix them) but I don’t want her to lose interest. I still have to do some research about this; what do you think? Any advice for mommy???

Also we are doing other pre-reading activities like matching upper and lowercase letters, opposites cards, go-together cards, rhyming cards, sequence cards. (Posting about them later!). And we are playing our SMAT sound BINGO…..I did this one for Pinky….great tool at the beginning but after daddy was using it with her……she doesn’t want it anymore….maybe daddy was a little bit hard with little princess??? I am waiting a bit to introduce it again later.

Also, thanks Lori from Montessori MOMents (Amazing blog!!!) for letting me know about an Object boxes Worksheet she did for her son about these same letters: SMAT. It is so great! I am adding it to our package. Sorry Lori, I cut it so it can fix nicely on our box. Thanks!! Also check her felt mat (great!)

If you find any “horror” on my pintables, let me know….mommy is still learning English…The images are from searching Google, so if you see any that has copyright, let me know and I take it out. I did those for Pinky and thought to share them with you.

Blessings!