Language

Being a scientific observer, Dr. Montessori saw first-hand how natural and persistent is the propensity of the child to write and then to read. The children in her first Children’s House loved to write on the walls. Rather than discourage their expression of language, she made materials for writing such as the metal insets, and letter boards made of sandpaper. Through feeling the shape of the letters (alphabet code), the children easily remembered their matching phonetic sounds and began to read. She cut out free- form letters and made the movable alphabet so that no child would have to write but could create words with the new letters. (It helped that Italian is a phonetic language.) With only these two cleverly-designed language materials, the children began to read naturally. It amazed the world! Today we have many more language materials, each a small bite in the process of full reading and comprehension.