Word Reading Cards-Language Apparatus Montessori

Montessori vocabulary cards sometimes referred to as three-part matching cards are used during the early stages of “reading” in the Montessori classroom. After developing mastery with identifying letters and their sounds, students move on to matching pictures with the words that describe them. Reading is an ability that develops during the Sensitive Period for Language, from prenatal hearing to the ‘Explosion into Reading’, around the age of five. Reading is an extension of the development of Vocabulary, the child discovers how a known word looks in graphic form after she has become a fluent speaker and has benefited from indirect and direct Enrichment Activities, the Three Period Lesson, Language Training, and Writing. It is impossible to read an unknown word meaningfully, in the Casa a child begins to read at around four years, some eight to ten months after beginning to write with the Moveable Alphabet, at around three to three and a half years. Children are never asked to read from the Moveable Alphabet and parents need to be discouraged from asking them to read, instead, children should be left to arrive at reading on their own, with enjoyment, excitement, and a love of reading.

Age at Presentation:

Four to five years

In Montessori, we work in the following order

Simple Sounds
Reading Words
Reading Phrases
Reading Sentences
Parts of Speech
Sentence structure

Phonetic Reading Cards
These cards have phonetic words of various lengths, written in pink with the vowels isolated in blue, either in cursive or print.

The child sounds out each card and reads it out loud. Encourage repetition by doing a few at a time.
If she wishes to write the word turn the card over and suggest she writes it from memory, sounding out the phonemes, using a pencil or the letters of the Moveable Alphabet.

Direct Aim:

To help the child realize that words are a group of graphemes which represent phonemes
To help the child to realize that reading is silent communication, words are a meaningful interpretation of another person’s thoughts.
When the child is around five years or is able to write and spell words, The child tries to write the word under the appropriate ‘Key Sound’, spelling it accurately and the child checks her own work with the booklets.