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You are here: Home / Teachers / Classroom Organization / A Year of Early Language Shelves

A Year of Early Language Shelves

January 2, 2016 By Seemi

I love the early language development area of my classroom!  There is a lot of foundational work that comes before children are introduced to letters.  Today’s post is about the kinds of activities we have on our pre-literacy or early language Montessori shelves.

A year of early language Montessori shelves

This is a photo of the Language area of our class (the “book area” is not shown in this image). The shelves are placed in a U shape around an area rug. The materials are set out in a left-right sequence starting with the simplest and moving to the most advanced. Most of the shelves focus on literacy and writing. This post is about that one shelf on the left which is dedicated to pre-literacy activities.

The Language Area

The Language Area

Our Pre-Literacy or Early Language Shelf has the following types of activities:

Oral Language Development

  • Vocabulary development with Montessori nomenclature cards (often used in the form of 3-part cards)
  • Inferring and comprehension by using picture cards and question cards
  • Function of word games (e.g. learning positional words etc.)

Matching

We use visual matching skills in many areas of the classroom, but I usually place cards and objects on this shelf:

  • Matching objects
  • Matching pictures (variations such as matching shadows, matching outlines, matching close-ups etc.)

Classification/Categorizing

Classification activities also fit well into themes and often find their way onto our Cultural shelves. But you’ll usually find one or more of the following on our Language shelves too:

  • Things that go together
  • Opposites

Sequencing

  • Putting a series of pictures in order
  • Retelling a story

Phonological Awareness

  • Word awareness activities
  • Rhyming
  • Syllables

Phonemic Awareness

  • Working with beginning sounds (I Spy, sorting, matching etc.)
  • Working with ending sounds (I Spy, sorting, matching etc.)
  • Working with middle sounds (I Spy, sorting)
  • Phoneme segmenting and blending activities
  • Phoneme substitution (sometimes we’ll pull these out, but children who are ready for this are usually readers already)

So here’s a peek at what this shelf looks like all year long. Click the links below to go to blog posts with more details and photos of all the activities.

August/Beginning of the Year

Object Matching Early Language Shelves from Trillium Montessori.

At the beginning of the year we put out a lot of object matching, picture matching, and vocabulary development work. Our goal is to focus on layout procedures and give the children things they can manipulate with their hands. I don’t have a blog post for the beginning of the year yet.

September

Farm Early Language Shelves from Trillium Montessori.

After the first few weeks of school, the shelf starts to look like it will for the rest of the year. I don’t have a blog post for my September activities yet, but our themes tend to be Apples and the Farm. These usually involve words that children are already familiar with so we can focus on teaching the procedures of how to use these materials.

September Printables in the Trillium Shop:  

  • Apples Preschool Pack
  • Apples Phonological Awareness Pack
  • Farm Preschool Pack
  • Farm Phonological Awareness Pack

October

October Early Language Shelves from Trillium Montessori.

You can read more details and see photos of all our October Language activities in the following posts:

  • October Printables
  • Get Ready for October
  • Fire Safety

October Printables in the Trillium Shop:  

  • October Montessori Pack
  • Pumpkin Patch Preschool Pack
  • Pumpkin Patch Phonological Awareness Pack
  • Fire Safety Preschool Pack
  • Day of the Dead Preschool Pack

November

Fall Early Language Shelves from Trillium Montessori

In November our early language materials follow themes of Fall, Leaves, and Thanksgiving. Check out the details in the following posts:

  • Get Ready for November
  • November Printables

November Printables in the Trillium Shop:

  • November Montessori Pack
  • Fall Preschool Pack
  • Fall Phonological Awareness Pack

December

Hanukkah Shelf

We just have a few weeks of school in December and we try to pack in some winter holidays onto our shelves this month. See more details in the posts below:

  • December Printables
  • December Phonological Awareness
  • Hanukkah

December Printables in the Trillium Shop:

  • Holiday Treats Preschool Pack
  • Holiday Treats Phonological Awareness
  • Hanukkah
  • Kwanzaa

January

January-Montessori-Winter-Go-togethers

January is all about winter! The following posts have more details with our Language activities for January:

  • Get Ready for January
  • January Printables
  • More Winter Printables
  • The Mitten

January Printables in the Trillium Shop:

  • January Montessori Pack
  • January Preschool Pack
  • The Mitten Phonological Awareness
  • Penguins Preschool Pack

February

February Early Language Shelf

I’d like to highlight our set of “Valentine Vehicle” themed activities available to download from the Trillium shop – this is a fun way to add interest to your shelf in February. Check out more ideas for February in the following posts:

  • Get Ready for February
  • On the Language Shelves in February

February Printables in the Trillium Shop:

  • Valentine Vehicles Preschool Pack
  • February Phonological Awareness
  • Candy Shop Middle Vowels

March

St Patricks Day Phonological Awareness Activity Beginning Sounds Build a Shamrock

In March we typically have some St. Patrick’s Day themed activities. More details below:

  • March Preschool Activities
  • March Phonological Awareness

March Printables in the Trillium Shop:

  • St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Pack
  • St. Patrick’s Day Phonological Awareness
  • Easter/Spring Preschool Pack
  • Easter/Spring Phonological Awareness Pack

April

Spring Close Up Matching Cards

By April we are fully into Spring and this lovely season is evident on all our shelves! See the following blog post for a closer look at many of our spring Language activities:

  • Spring Literacy Activities for Preschool

April Printables in the Trillium Shop:

  • Spring Montessori Pack
  • In the Garden Preschool Pack
  • In the Garden Phonological Awareness

May

Bugs and Spring Early Language Shelves from Trillium Montessori.

In May we often talk about all kinds of bugs. I don’t have a post detailing our early language shelves in May, but you can see some of our Bug themed activities here:

  • Learning About Bugs

May Printables in the Trillium Shop:

  • Bugs Preschool Pack
  • Bugs Phonological Awareness

 

More Language Activities

The following posts go into a little more detail about some of the other shelves in our Language Area:

  • A Tour of Jennifer’s Montessori Language Shelves
  • Are Sandpaper Letters Enough?
  • Short Vowels
  • The Montessori Blue Reading Series
  • Phonetic Books for Beginning Readers

 


Related Products

Click the images for details. (Affiliate links may be included in this post. See full disclosures here.)

Filed Under: Classroom Organization, Language Tagged With: Beginning of School

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