One of the reasons I like using Montessori with my younger children is their use of hands-on objects to get concepts across. Montessori does a great job of teaching to the five senses.
This past year to appease PC #4's strong desire to 'read' we started another fun project here at Knotty Pines Academy which involved making 'ABC sound pouches'. I wish I could take credit for coming up with this neat idea, but I can't because I gleaned it from Katherine over at Life in the Onion Dome and Jojo from A Bit of This and A Bit of That. One of my absolute favorite things about reading different blogs is being inspired by *seeing* all the creative ideas other people are doing with their children then taking those ideas and adapting them for my own family.
We just did not have the time last Fall to sew our own pouches like Jojo did (you must take a peek they are really beautiful), so instead we opted for a productive trip to Michael's Craft store to purchase all the supplies to make our own sound pouches. In the following pictures I will explain the steps we used in making our own sound pouches.
We chose white canvas bags for all the consonant letters and colored pouches for the vowels. We worked on completing one pouch per week.While at Michael's we found some self-adhesive letters. On one side they have adhesive but on the other they are made with plain cardboard so that Lucy could paint them.
Here she is painting her two vowels 'gold' because they belong to the special vowel family. The gold will show up nicely against the colored pouches.
Then she painted all the consonants in primary colors, which showed up nicely against the white canvas bags. After the letters were dry she got to stick them on her bags.
While at Michaels Craft store we were able to find some wonderful 'things' to put in each of the bags. We found many of these items on sale in the wood projects section of the store.We also found other objects from the older girls surplus Barbie paraphernalia, our nature center, continent drawers etc. to add to her bags on a weekly basis. These sound pouches should prove to come in very handy with her younger siblings when they get ready to learn their alphabet sounds.
Making books has become a favorite form of narration here at Knotty Pines Academy and this will be PC #4's first very own handmade book! She also loves sign language and drawing both of which could be incorporated into making a very nice book. I also saw some felt adhesive letters that could be added for a tactile component -- hmm -- time for me to do some different alphabet picture book research at the library. Maybe we could incorporate some of those fairy themes from Serendipity and we will definitely want to add our own alphabet Saints. This could be fun block to start out our year. I'll definitely blog more if this comes to fruition.
