Jennifer Nichols’ gave us a tour of the materials on her Montessori Language shelves in the Trillium Community Facebook group a few weeks ago and I am delighted to feature her photos on the blog today! Jennifer has a charming little Montessori school in her home, called Whole Child Montessori.
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This is a view of the entire Language area. Jennifer’s students are all preschoolers so she doesn’t have some of the advanced Language materials that you might see in a class that includes Kindergartners.
This is the pre-literacy shelf. It includes pre-reading exercises such as vocabulary development, comprehension, matching, sorting, and phonemic awareness. Many of the Trillium Preschool and Phonological Awareness packs are perfect for this area of the classroom. I can see some of the “Earth Day” and “In the Garden” materials here!
These shelves hold the Sandpaper Letters and initial sound materials.
Jennifer has organized her letters into four groupings. Each group of sandpaper letters has a little box with objects for sorting by initial sound.
She also created a set of pictures for sorting by beginning sound.
These are some bingo cards she created. I love playing letter bingo. This is a great way to put some children together who have mastered the letter sounds with others who are in the second period. The child who knows the letters is the “caller” and calls out the letters which the players then have to find on their boards.
Jennifer has a set of mini books for each letter. I’m not sure where she found them, but you can download a set of mini alphabet books from my shop and make your own. (Available in cursive and D’Nealian too).
There is a “spelling box” for each grouping of letters. When a child has mastered most of the letters in the group (and has the phonemic awareness skills), he can start to spell some simple words using those letters. This is a modified use of the Movable Alphabet.
This is the writing shelf with the Movable Alphabet at the top and various writing exercises below. I love how she’s using bird seed in the writing tray!
The metal insets. Love the glass jar pencil holders!
The pink series beginning reading materials. You can find some free pink series printables from The Helpful Garden.
This shelf has some blue series reading materials and phonetic books (Superstar Readers)
Thank you, Jennifer, for sharing these photos!
If you would like to have your classroom shelves featured here, please share your photos in our weekly Shelfie Saturday threads in the Trillium Community group or email them to me directly at support @ trilliummontessori.org (no spaces). Can’t wait to see your room!
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Seemi holds a Master's degree in education, and an AMS Early Childhood credential. She has twenty years of experience in Montessori as a teacher, school administrator, and school owner. Seemi is the founder of TrilliumMontessori.org.