Montessori Crosswords is a game that beginning or fluent readers can play on their own. Apart from its obvious advantage of being fun and challenging with 3 levels, it also provides an interesting opportunity to reinforce their literacy skills.
How do children learn to read?
Research has shown that the basic process of learning to read involves two steps. First, beginning readers must link the phonetic sounds to the appropriate letters. The phonetic sound of a letter is the sound it creates in a word. For example, the letter "t” makes a “tuh” sound.
Once they know the phonetic sounds of letters, beginning readers can start sounding out words, by pulling apart the sounds that each letter makes, and then putting them back together to make words.
The more a beginning reader comes across the same words and letter combinations, the faster the process will become. Eventually, reading becomes effortless. Montessori Crosswords is a fun and therefore very effective way to help your kids achieve that result.
The Montessori method
The Montessori approach to reading and writing focuses on the phonetic aspect of language. Maria Montessori noticed that children as young as two showed interest in written letters. She therefore developed specific products designed to help younger kids learn the phonetic sounds associated with letters. The range includes the Sandpaper letters, a sensorial material designed to optimize learning the correspondence between letters and phonetic sounds.
Once kids know the sounds of some letters, and are used to recognizing the various sounds that make up a word, they can start using the Movable alphabet to actually write words. This can be done even before kids can read, because when writing, they only need to pick the letters associated with the phonetic sounds in a word. Reading is more complex, as it involves pulling apart the letters, turning them into phonetic sounds, and putting them back together to make a word.
Freed from the difficulty to form letters on paper, children will quickly be able to compose words by putting together the letters representing the sounds that make up the words. This helps them learn more effectively.
Our portable movable alphabet allows you to enjoy the benefits of the traditional wooden sets with some added features which make playing with letters even more enjoyable.
Age Range
Activities you will share with your kids - or they perform on their own - depend on their current knowledge of letters and their phonetic sounds, so there is no strict age range for this game. You can start playing with letters and their phonetic sounds with your 3 year-old and have a lot of fun - that’s also what our movable alphabet is made for! -, while your 10 year-old will enjoy solving the most difficult crosswords on her own, thus building up her spelling skills. All our crosswords are self-corrective, so that kids can play and enjoy the game whether they are beginners or fluent readers.
How to play the game with your kid
1) If your kid cannot read and write fluently yet
Note: if your child does not know the phonetic sound of letters yet, check the section “Learning Phonetics sounds” below.
Your kid is still analyzing the sounds of words: looking at the picture, she pronounces the word and breaks it into its component sounds, e.g. “cat” -> “c” , “a” ,”t” phonetic sounds.
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•Use level 1/Pink series
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•Show the picture to your child and ask her what the picture shows ( “cat”). You may want to touch the picture to hear the audio for the word, or let your kid pronounce it herself, whether aloud or not.
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•Ask her what is the first sound she hears (“c”)
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•Ask her to pick the letter that produces this sound in the movable alphabet, and to drop that letter onto the first rectangle next to the picture. Activating the audio for letters allows your child to check immediately whether her choice of letter was correct or not.
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•If she does not choose the correct letter, let her go on and experiment, the game will show her she hasn’t picked the right letter. Then, you can pronounce the letter she chose by mistake - or touch it if letters audio is activated-, say the word (“cat”) aloud, and ask her whether she heard the phonetic sound associated with that letter in the word.
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•Repeat these steps for all the letters of the word...and wait for the grand finale fireworks!
Once you have introduced the game, kids may want to play on their own. Show them that solutions are hidden on the upper-right corner of the board, and tell them they may check the spelling whenever they need to. Don’t worry if they always look up words, every child learns at her own pace and in her own way. Some prefer to always get the spelling right, or need to check that what they think is correct. In any case, the time will come when your kid has learned how to spell all the words of the first series, and will be ready to go on to the next level...This training is also a first step toward reading.
Please note that you can choose not to activate the audio feature. For some children, better results are achieved when they pronounce the words, whether aloud or not, while trying to find the letters associated with each component phonetic sound. Others will find the audio function very helpful. Once you know whether your child is more comfortable with the audio, you can choose to activate this function or not.
2) If your kid is a beginning reader/writer
Choose level according to how an advanced beginner your kid is - see level description below.
To show him how the application works, do a first crossword with him as described in the previous section. Then, you can play with your child or let him play on his own.
Note: when your child jumps to the next level, he may need your help to learn the more complex sounds created by letter combinations. Higher levels mean more challenging combinations: consonant blends, eg “br”, vowel digraphs, eg “ea”, or combos, eg. “oo”.
3) If your kid is a fluent reader/writer
In this case, your kid can use level 3 all the time. You can play with him to have fun and explain some writing difficulties he does not master yet. Or of course, he can also play alone!
Difficulty level / Montessori word series
Words are more or less complex from a phonetic perspective, and Montessori methods have classified the different words in three main series which are reflected in the 3 levels of the game. You should choose the level according to the kid’s degree of proficiency.
Level 1/Pink: Displays words extracted from the Montessori Pink Series. Pink series words contains simple 3-letter words with three individual sounds such as “cat” or ”red”. In this level, one word only is displayed at a time. This way, kids can more easily concentrate on each difficulty.
Level 2/Blue: Contains more challenging words from the Montessori Blue Series. Blue Series words are more complex, containing consonant blends such as “fl”,”st” or ”ck”. In this level, a crossword with two words is displayed (a word from the pink series may also be used in the crossword).
Level 3/Green: Adds the Montessori Green series to the existing pink and green word list. The Green series contains the complex phonetic words not included in the previous series. Some word contain vowel combos - where two vowels are associated to create a specific sound. In this level, a crossword with three words is displayed (words from the pink and green series can also be used in this level).
For more details on the different word series, check this nice article:
http://lesson-plans-materials.suite101.com/article.cfm/teaching_phonetic_reading_in_montessori
Learning Phonetic sounds
As explained in section “How do children learn to read?”, learning the phonetic sound of letters is the first step in learning to build words.
To build and strengthen the kid’s consciousness of the link between letters and their phonetic sounds, you can use :
- The Movable Alphabet to play with letters and offer your child an open-ended activity. You can introduce each letter and its phonetic sound, show how to build simple words, or your kids can simply create any words they like, or play with the animated letters for fun, which will help them becoming familiar with the letter symbols. The new audio function will help your child build and strengthen his personal database of letter/sound associations.
- You can also use level 1 of the Crosswords. The first level (similar to the Montessori Pink Series Phonics reading cards) contains only simple 3-letter words which provide a good introduction to word-writing. Also check the above tips for more details about the Crosswords activity.
For more examples and information on phonetics sounds and using the movable alphabet, you may want to check these Web articles:
-look for the section “Using the Movable Alphabet” in the following article:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2095474_use-montessori-use-movable-alphabet.html
-Montessori Phonetics (with examples)
http://montessorimom.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/01/montessori_phoe.html
-An example of usage (don’t forget that you should always use the phonetic sound of the letter)
http://www.montessorimom.com/moveable-alphabet/
-The following activity requires the sandpaper letters material, but you can also do it with the Movable Alphabet
http://www.ehow.com/how_4516711_practice-phonetic-sounds-using-sandpaper.html
General advice: keep it fun!
This is especially true if your children are very young. Children are natural learners, but don’t forget that not everyone is ready to learn the same things at the same time!
Child-directed learning as in the Montessori original philosophy is not only more enjoyable for the child, it is also probably the most efficient way to learn. So the best thing to do is let your kids play freely, while being available to answer their questions and help them if they need you!
