Category Archives: Language

School is Out, Summer is Here… but Learning (and Fun) Don’t Need to End!

by Camilla Nichols and Zachery Inkley,
with additional content by Tori Inkley

Along with welcoming Summer, we would like to provide some fun activities and ideas to help keep your children stimulated in a meaningful way. It’s important for them to remain in a state of learning and exploration even when they’re not attending school. One suggestion would be to arrange a small shelf in your home with activities that you can rotate throughout the summer. Set it up so that your children can independently choose the work they desire. The activities can represent the same areas found in our Prepared Environments at MCA: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Science, Math, Cultural, and Art. For more information on how to set up a Prepared Environment at home, visit https://themontessorichildrensacademy.com/blog/2016/06/13/maintaining-a-montessori-mindset-through-the-summer/ and visit https://www.forsmallhands.com/  and  https://livingmontessorinow.com for Montessori items and ideas.

No matter where the summer takes you, we encourage families to spend as much time as possible outside and in nature, as screen time is best saved as a treat for rainy days. New Jersey has so many beautiful parks and beaches for you and your little ones to enjoy. Take a hike through South Mountain Reservation or go see the Great Falls of Paterson! While exploring the outdoors, take time to set up Scavenger Hunts, or help your children craft their own Nature Journals. They can collect and learn about all the different beautiful flowers of our region or do leaf shadings to help fill up the pages of their journals. At home, you and your children could grow an herb, vegetable, or flower garden, or together you could research all the critters roaming in your own backyard! To learn more about animals from all over the globe, your family could take a trip to the Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, or if your children are more curious about our aquatic friends, you could visit Jenkinson’s Aquarium while enjoying a day on the Point Pleasant boardwalk!

Most of our local libraries have Story Times for children. Taking your young ones to such events will help to inspire their imaginations and reinvigorate their passion for reading. We also encourage you to read with your children at home as often as possible, or maybe listen to audiobooks together while picnicking outside! We’ve included some links to books we recommend at the end of this post.

Finally, if possible, explore local museums and art festivals to stimulate your children’s imaginations and encourage their creative sides. Both Montclair and Morristown, as well as New York City, have excellent museums, and Montclair also has art festivals and live music concerts all summer long! If you really want to watch little eyes go wide, take your children to Liberty Science Center, where they can get a taste of almost everything this world has to offer. Right now, they have an incredible exhibit on the Blue Whale, a Touch Tunnel where children can learn how much we rely on our sense of touch, and a Globe IMAX Theater where you can take incredibly life-like trips through the farthest stretches of the universe and the greatest depths of the sea. We encourage you to embrace every opportunity to expand the young minds of your children and broaden their natural sense of wonder!

We hope all of our families have a lovely summer full of exploration and joy!

NJ Parks and Reservations:

NJ Zoos and Aquariums:

Museums and Creative Centers:

Classic Children’s Books:

  • Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
  • Anatole by Eve Titus
  • Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
  • Max and the Tag-Along Moon by Floyd Cooper
  • Abuela by Arthur Dorros
  • Corduroy by Don Freeman
  • The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
  • The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
  • Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag
  • Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
  • The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
  • The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey
  • The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
  • Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman
  • Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

Arts and Crafts for Inside Days:

And for those rainy days, or possibly travel days, when you feel a little tech time is appropriate for your children, you may want to check out the app “Mobile Montessori” at https://www.mobilemontessori.org .

Language Development: The Montessori Method and the Absorbent Mind

by Fiorella Benson, Early Childhood Head Teacher
(edited by Tori Inkley)

“So, the child, it is clear, does not inherit a pre-established model for his language, but he inherits the power of constructing a language by an unconscious activity of absorption.”
~ Dr. Maria Montessori (The Absorbent Mind)

Maria Montessori explained that human beings are born with a special mechanism that allows them to learn a language by interacting with people around them and from experiences within their environment. She believed that this period spans from birth to the age of six; a period during which children have an “absorbent mind”. Montessori observed that during the first three years, children follow a pre-determined plan in a process that is primarily unconscious, allowing them to absorb the structure of language and express themselves in sentences with the right syntax. The results of this first phase become evident during the period of the conscious mind between the ages of three and six, when children develop a sense of awareness, explore their environment through independent purposeful movement, and continue their development of language in reading and writing.

The Montessori Method in the Language Area takes into consideration this “sensitive period” of language when a child has an absorbent mind and highlights the importance of creating an adequately prepared environment to help the child’s individual ability to construct his or her own knowledge through work. The Language Area in the Montessori classroom combines the progression of a series of steps with appropriate materials to help the child develop language.

Children work with the Sequencing Materials first, as this helps to develop self-expression, communication, and classification. Sandpaper Letters follow, as they help the child explore the physical construction of the sound, as well as its phonetic importance. Children are introduced to sounds using the Three Period Lesson: “This is…”, “Show me…”, and “What is…”. They use their first and middle fingers to trace the letters while repeating the sounds they make. This activity prepares the child to write when she or he can hold a pencil properly, and it also helps the child to visualize the similarities and differences between the letters and to memorize sounds, which is another crucial step in reading. Following a multi-sensory approach, the child will then trace the letters on a chalkboard before progressively writing between two lines on paper using a pencil.

Touching the letters and looking at them at the same time, fixes the image more quickly through the co-operation of the senses. Later, the two facts separate; looking becomes reading; touching becomes writing.” ~ Maria Montessori (The Montessori Method)

During this time, writing is also introduced so that the child develops an association between words that are being read and words that are written. One of the first steps is to strengthen the hand muscles and to familiarize children with the precision of movement used in writing by working with the Metal Insets. The child traces a pink metal frame with a colored pencil, and later, traces parallel lines from left to right.

The materials and activities in the Practical Life area improve hand-eye coordination and require the children to work from left to right and top to bottom, as they will do when writing and reading. Materials in the Sensorial area, such as the Touch Boards, the Touch Tablets, and the Knobbed Cylinders, help the child when preparing to work with the Sandpaper Letters and indirectly with handwriting.

On the road to reading, Montessori students work with the Large Movable Alphabet. They first receive lessons on building three-letter phonetic words using objects and picture cards, followed by building four-letter (or more) words using objects and pictures. Once this is mastered, the child will continue through the phonetic series of reading materials. From there, children progressively move on to more complex, non-phonetic words using the Small Movable Alphabet. Here, they learn consonant blends and phonograms and make booklets using both.

Teaching grammar is also part of the Montessori Method. Grammar exercises in the Montessori classroom that focus on Parts of Speech use different symbols and colors to represent nouns, adjectives, articles, verbs, and adverbs. Through various materials and activities that utilize cards and objects, children learn the function of the Parts of Speech and the correct order in which to place them in a sentence.

Phonetic Reading
Montessori Phonetic Farm – Nouns and Adjectives

As with writing, the Montessori Method not only utilizes Montessori materials to help children learn how to read, but also exposes them to other meaningful experiences where reading is involved, such as listening to stories being read aloud that range from fiction to nonfiction to poetry and so on. These experiences allow the children to discover that language is a way to communicate ideas, understand the world around them, and be part of a community. This directly corresponds with Maria Montessori’s concept of Cosmic Education and assists children in developing a sense of gratitude for the Universe and their role within it. Children, unsuspectingly, discover that language is simply a foundational step on their individual educational journeys.