4Real Forums: what type of letters should I start out

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Nurturing the Years of Wonder
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Topic: what type of letters should I start out

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dolorsofmary
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Posted: Jan 23 2010 at 10:08am \| IP Logged

OK I'm still doing Montessori on a budget. I have invested about $5.00 so far so no loss. My 4.5 yr old son is all boy and really just wants to play. I thought he would be excited about going to the parent/teacher store to get some letter stuff but before even opening the front door to the store he told me that he did not want to do letters. But he does a good job retaining the sounds of vowels in Spanish (my husband is Hispanic and reviews vowel sounds and some words with him, I also will pronounce words in Spanish like the numbers 0-10, colors, some food, some animals, and such) My husband thinks he is ready. We have tons of refrigerator magnets all uppercase. I have his name printed out in uppercase on the wall for quite some time. The say the learn to spell their name first usually and usually they get first acquainted with the first letter of their name which is 'J' Then we still have Christmas stuff up until Candlemas (Feb. 2nd) and we have a Jesus stocking which has His name spelled 'Jesus' I never gave the upper and lower case much though because he couldn't read. A montessori teacher friend pointed out that when I read to him (I've always read to him tons of books since he was 3 months old) most of the letters are in lower case. I have no lower case letter manipulatives like magnets or echasketch until our run to the parent teacher store. THe had a lot of upper and lower case letters, sand paper andotherwise and letter games all of which he was NOT interested in. He wanted to play play play and that was it. I am not complaining. I know boys in general take longer to mature and that is fine. I dont' want to buy something and then a few years from now be like -where did I put that? Oh I guess I have to buy it again! So I got the lower case magnets and I made a ton of lower case letters out of poster board, I cut them out in rectangles. I made the vowels red and the consonants blue. I left the uppercase up on the fridge too. We have the wordwhammer on the fridge too. Once we got home he immediately used the stocking to help me spell Jesus. And that was the first and last time he did anything with it. Even the store helper said that she did not think he was ready yet. I don't want to push him. I know that is wrong. Then I just got an e-mail back from some montessori on-line place and they replied to me that I should start out with sandpaper letters first prior to manipulatives. I had he try sandpaper letters in the store, The rough touch did not repulse him. He was just not interested. So I guess I should just let it be. And take my time and read and watch the montessori philosphy book(s) and video tapes and just do life skills with him until he shows more readiness. What do you more season's mom's say? Thanks for your advice!

Mackfam
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Posted: Jan 23 2010 at 11:15am \| IP Logged

dolorsofmary wrote:

So I guess I should just let it be. And take my time and read and watch the montessori philosphy book(s) and video tapes and just do life skills with him until he shows more readiness. What do you more season's mom's say? Thanks for your advice!

Yes. I think this is a good approach. Montessori is, in its essence, about observation of the child. If you have observed a lack of interest, move on. I think I remember Lori (a trained Montessori teacher that sometimes pops in here) saying that children generally have two sensitive periods to letters - one when they are very young, and then interest wanes, and another sensitive period when they are older...I just can't remember the age she mentioned.

I can confirm that with my own little guy. He was super interested in letters and sounds around 3 so I offered him things to work with. Then, for the last year, he had absolutely no interest. I put things away and observed and offered other work for him. Occasionally, I would present something to him to gauge interest...if it wasn't there, we'd move on again. Within the last couple of months (he's 5 now) he's really become interested again so we're doing some basic work which he's really enjoying and pulling off the shelf to work with independently.

Set out some enjoyable practical life work - scooping, sorting, tweezing, etc - and take this time to read and learn about Montessori's philosophy.

I wanted to offer you a collection of links we've put together for EARLY CHILDHOOD RESOURCES. Not all of them are Montessori oriented - they are general early childhood education - but you will find several threads and resource links with books and materials and discussion that could help you dig in a little bit more.

Hope this helps!

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Jen Mackintosh
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dolorsofmary
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Posted: Jan 23 2010 at 3:34pm \| IP Logged

Thank you so much! The early childhood resources are great!

violingirl
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Posted: Jan 24 2010 at 11:49pm \| IP Logged

I second what Jennifer said, particularly about there being two specific sensitive periods for letters. In between those periods with DS1 we just continued to keep up with having an environment full of letters. We read a lot, had the magnetic letters on the fridge and letter work available if he wanted it but didn't make a big deal about it.

The interest will definitely come and I really appreciate Jennifer's advice about presenting work to gauge interest then putting it away if he's just not there yet. While DS1 was really into letters the first time he had absolutely no interest in any of the math related work so I put it away after awhile of worrying about it. A few months later he had gone completely opposite- he wanted only math work and no letter work.

I guess my advice is to just keep watching, and having a learning environment. I don't have any kind of budget for educational materials right now while we're waiting to figure out my husband's job situation, so we get books at the library, I make a lot of our work, and I try to remember that the cleaning they help me do and the plain old play time is just as important. :)

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Erin
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