I am working to properly sequence my Montessori Language shelves in our home classroom. My sons are on the younger side so I am heavy in the Montessori shelves pre-reading and pink series work. I like to switch up pre-reading shelves with new works every few weeks or so. There is a lot of variety so have fun with it!

Check out my Pre-Reading Materials Bundle!

“Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.” ― Maria Montessori

Montessori Shelves – Pre-Reading and Pink Series

Here are our language shelves. I only have two children to worry about in my classroom so I can keep it simple. There is no blue or green level work out yet. The flow goes practical life to sensorial to reading and writing to pre-math to life sciences to geography. Pin Poking and Metal Insets are a permanent fixture on a table on one side of the room. I want the boys to be able to access this pre-writing work whenever they desire.

We also have a reading nook to the right of these shelves. I am considering adding another small shelf to add some room for a few works.

Montessori Pre-Reading

Our Pre-Reading works includes a category image sorting. I created cards with mammals and flowers. The work is to sort by category. Object to object matching is a popular (and easy) work to put together but my boys were ready for something new.

Melissa & Doug's See & Spell is an excellent Pre-Reading work. I chose boards with short vowels words and chose only enough letters to cover the words as the control of error.

I also offer a Montessori Pink Series Materials Bundle!

Montessori Pink Series

Sound Basket – A permanent fixture on our shelves in our Montessori Sound basket. It will include a flip book with images, objects, the proper sandpaper letter, tracing sheets and rainbow letters sheets. This work is the first thing we'll do at the start of the week.

Sound Group Basket – We also have a sound group (we're only on the first group “smat”. I added “c”, too.) basket. I included the appropriate sandpaper letters and objects to match to the proper sound.

Short Vowel Images – I included a basket of images divided by “a e i o u” for vocabulary building and word building with the moveable alphabet. I plan to use some of these images for an image to word label matching work soon.

Short Vowel Word Labels & Moveable Alphabet – I decided to mix up the Object Boxes (match word label to object) work we usually have on the shelf. This container included short vowel word labels and the moveable alphabet letters to match the word labels (as a control of error, I included only the letters needed to build the words on the labels).

Word Family Cards – I made these cards with old file folders. I cut them up. I wrote a word family, such as “at”, on the outside. On the inside of the folder are the words included in that family (e.g. “cat”, “mat”, “hat”, etc). I chose only short vowel “a” words to keep it consistent across the other works. My 4 year old loves reading these cards. He is now interested in using tracing paper to trace the words.

Short Vowel Object Word Label Match – I found this cute little pink “suitcase” at Goodwill recently. It is perfect for included a small bag of short vowel objects and their respective word labels. Small clips, a pencil and small pieces of tracing paper are nearby for my four year old to access as an extension. This work includes only short vowel “a” again to keep it simple and consistent for my boys.

Check out my Montessori Pre-Reading Activities Pack!

I hopre you found this post helpful!
Marnie