Letter sounds at home: matching how the classroom teaches reading

In a Montessori classroom, children learn the sound a letter makes before they learn its name. A child tracing the sandpaper letter "m" hears "mmm", and the name "em" comes much later. If you teach letter names at home, your child hears two systems at once.

How the sandpaper letters work

Sandpaper letters are lowercase letters cut from sandpaper and mounted on smooth boards. Consonants and vowels are on different colored boards. The guide shows a child how to trace the letter with two fingers, in the direction it's written, while saying its sound. The child feels the shape, sees it and hears it in the same moment.

The guide usually presents two or three sounds at a time, using a three-period lesson: "This is mmm." Then, "Show me mmm." Then, pointing, "What is this?" Children start with lowercase letters because most of what they'll read is lowercase.

Ask your child's guide which sounds your child has been shown so far. Some schools send a list home. Others will tell you at a conference or in a short note.

Say the sound, keep it short

Here's how to say each sound cleanly:

• Say the sound alone, with no extra "uh" on the end. "B" is a quick puff of sound. Most adults need a few days of practice to get this right.
• Hold the sounds you can stretch: "mmm", "sss", "fff", "lll".
• Use the short vowel sound first: "a" as in apple, "i" as in insect, "o" as in octopus.
• When your child asks, "What's that letter?", answer with the sound. "That's sss, like in sun."

If your child already knows letter names from songs or a sibling, answer with the sound each time and leave the names alone.

Five games for the kitchen, the car and the bath

These take a minute or two each. Play them when your child is interested and stop before they're bored.

1. I spy with sounds. "I spy something that starts with mmm." Start with the first sound of a word. When your child gets good at it, try the last sound: "I spy something that ends with t."
2. Sound basket. Put three or four small objects in a basket that start with sounds your child knows, such as a cup, a mitten and a sock. Ask your child to hand you "the one that starts with c". Swap the objects every week or so.
3. Name sounds. Say a family member's name slowly and ask for the first sound. Children like hearing their own name broken into sounds.
4. Silly starts. Change the first sound of a familiar word. "Can I have a lilk of milk?" Most four-year-olds will correct you.
5. Tracing in sand or salt. Pour a thin layer of salt on a tray. Trace a letter your child knows with two fingers and say its sound. Then hand over the tray.

Skip worksheets and flashcards for now. Children in the classroom learn letters with their hands, and the games above work the same way.

Questions to ask the guide

Ask your child's guide a few questions so you teach sounds in the same order as the classroom:

• "Which sounds has my child been shown, and which ones are they still practicing?"
• "Is my child starting the moveable alphabet yet?" (The moveable alphabet is a box of cut-out letters children use to build words by sound before they can write them by hand.)
• "How do you want us to answer when our child asks how to spell a word?"
• "Are there words you'd like us to avoid sounding out yet, like ones with 'sh' or 'th'?"

Many guides introduce letter combinations such as "sh", "ch" and "th" later, as their own sounds. If your child spells "ship" as "sip" with the moveable alphabet, that's the stage they're at, and the guide will show the combination when the time comes.

When your child wants to write

Some children want to write words at home before they can form letters well. Let them use magnetic lowercase letters on the fridge, or a small set of cut-out letters, to build words by sound. A child who builds "c-a-t" by listening to each sound is doing the same work as the moveable alphabet at school.

When you read aloud, run your finger under a short word now and then and sound it out slowly. Keep it to one or two words a book. A child asked to sound out every word soon stops asking you to read.