Language Development Tips for a 3 Year Old

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A friend of mine emailed me last night to ask for some guidance as her lovely child began the journey to reading at a rapid pace. After I wrote the email to her, I thought I should share the Language development tips a la Montessori’s Approach to Language with you.

Reading Readiness 3 year old language development tips

Montessori Language Development Tips

Keep reading to her A LOT.
Invest in First Readers like the great Bob Books and Miss Rhonda’s Readers
Check out this super easy learning sounds activity for kids.
Emphasize the SOUNDS of the letters as opposed to the letters themselves (e.g. “ay” versus “ah”)
Object boxes or baskets are good to start. Fill a box on your own or with your child with objects that begin with the letter, M, for example. Find a “man”, a “motorcycle”, a “mirror”, etc. Anything concrete that she can put in her hand, explore, etc, is huge at this stage of development.
Learn about & Introduce Montessori’s Moveable Alphabet. Anything that gets her hands moving with the “reading” and “spelling” is good for development and will help with writing. So, for example, move your finger with the words left to right, bring out letters and start spelling words from your books, etc.
Storytelling activities are always fun too. One that we love doing is storytelling from a bag or write a story together with your preschooler. Have your child collect various objects then come back to you, together make up a story using the objects. For example, she collects an orange, an elephant, and a toothbrush: “Once upon a time there was an Elephant who really wanted to eat an orange…” It is fun to take turns.