Moveable Alphabet: Building First Words

Direct aim. To compose words by sounding them out and choosing the matching letters.

Indirect aims, the ones you will not see at once

A shallow box with a compartment for each letter. Montessori kept four copies per compartment and glued a black letter at the bottom of each, so a child putting letters away knows where each one goes.

Letters the same shape and size as the sandpaper letters, cut from card or wood. Her 1912 set cut vowels from blue card and consonants from red; the 1914 Handbook says pink and blue.

Two sizes: a large alphabet for the first words and a smaller one once the child knows every letter.

A rug or long table, so words can run left to right with space between them.

Four to six objects with three-sound names, cat or pig for example.

1. 1Lay out a rug and bring the moveable alphabet box and a small object, such as a toy cat.Silent Set the box at the top of the rug, open.
2. 2Name the object: "Cat." Say it slowly, stretching each sound: "c-a-t."Say "Cat." Then slowly, "c-a-t," stretching each sound.
3. 3"What's the first sound you hear?" When the child says /c/, have them find the c in the box and place it on the rug.Say "What's the first sound you hear?" Wait. Don't point to the letter.
4. 4Continue: "What sound comes next?" for /a/ and then /t/, placing each letter to the right.Say "What sound comes next?" Say the word again slowly if the child needs it.
5. 5Read back what the child built, running your finger under the letters.Say Read it with them, slowly, then at speaking pace: "c-a-t, cat."
6. 6Build another word, then return the letters to their compartments.Silent Each letter goes back into its own compartment, which is part of the exercise.

Building their own name, which children ask for early.

Hearing the word again at speaking speed after building it sound by sound.

Putting each letter back on its matching letter in the box.

A word an adult can read that the child built alone.

Mostly the adult and the child's own ear at first. Later, matching to labels in the object box gives an independent check.

Montessori’s name for this check is the control of error.

• Building words for pictures, then for words the child chooses
• Short phrases and sentences
• Copying built words onto paper
• Dictation of well-known words only, so each built word ends in an idea the child recognizes
• A label for a drawing the child has made

Variations

• Short-vowel word list for building and readingPDF, 1 page, 114 KBForty three-sound words spelled the way they sound, eight for each short vowel. Each one names a thing a child can hold or point to.

Free to print for your family, no email needed. Print at 100%, not “fit to page”, so the drawings keep their scale. Every printable on the site is listed on the printables page.

Ready for the first presentation

Ready for the next lesson

Small cut-out letters are choking-size for a child under 3. Keep the box out of a toddler's reach.

We have not bought the paid homeschool curricula, so they are not listed here.

1. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method (1912)

   Chapter XVII, Third Period

   Alphabets identical in form to the sandpaper letters but cut out of cardboard, kept in shallow cases with a compartment of four copies for each letter and a black letter glued at the bottom; vowels cut from blue cardboard and consonants from red.

   The child composes a spoken word such as "mama" sound by sound with cut-out cardboard letters, then reads back the word he has built.

   Only well-known words are dictated, so the composition results in an idea, and the child rereads the word he has composed many times.

   After composing a word the child puts away every letter, each in its own compartment, so comparison and selection of the signs are practised twice.

   Chapter XVII, Reading

   Writing precedes reading; translating his own written word back into sounds is not yet reading, which is the interpretation of an idea from written signs.

2. Maria Montessori, Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook (1914)

   Writing, Fig. 31

   The alphabet of movable letters cut out in pink and blue cardboard, kept in a box with compartments, serves for the composition of words; in a language that is not phonetic the teacher composes the words and pronounces them.

   Writing

   There are two movable alphabets, one of larger letters for the first exercises and one of smaller letters for children who already know the complete alphabet.

Lesson text and the scope and sequence are CC BY 4.0: reuse them with credit to Owen Wren, Homeschool Montessori, and a link. Photos and illustrations are all rights reserved. The plates from Montessori's 1912 and 1914 books are public domain and not ours. Terms.