Montessori Phonetical Order of presenting ABCs Alphabet letters

Even though, Adrian knows his ABCs, daily practice and repetition is crucial for long-term retention of learned material. Today, Adrian was working with wooden PlanToys Alphabet letters (buy here): matching capital letters to double- sided bases. The front base has animal pictures which relate to the alphabet, and on the back are directions for proper letter writing. At first, Adrian matched the wooden letters to the animal picture cards, with letters placed on the mat non-sequentially.

Thereafter, Adrian matched the PlanToys letters to Waldorf Alphabet Cards (buy here). There artistic watercolor letter cards are beautifully illustrated in gentle watercolors. Each full-color card creatively depicts one large capital letter, a smaller lower-case letter, and an animal whose name begins with that letter. The visual reference of an animal on each letter card reinforces a child's learning of the letters and sounds of each.

In a Montessori language curriculum, alphabet letters are not  first presented to a child in an alphabetical order, like A, B, C, D etc. The idea is to introduce the letters phonetically (the way they sound) rather than by the name.  Phonetical order is proven to be very effective in allowing children to quickly form as many words as possible when learning the letter sounds. There are few orders suggested, and we are following the order suggested in How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin (buy the book here – a Montessori -beginner must have book.)

We have replicated the order below using wooden PlanToys letters, Waldorf cards, and our animal figurines: (you would begin by introducing to a child the first set of letters using the 3🅿️🌠 Three Period Lesson, followed by the second set, etc)

First set: c  m  a  t 

Second set: s  r  i  p

Third set: b  f  o  g 

Fourth set: h  j  u  l

Fifth set: d  w  e  n

Sixth set: k  q  v  x  y  z. 

Read here a post about Montessori 3🅿️🌠 Three Period Lesson in Action (using First Phonetical Set: s m a t), and here the post about Second Phonetical Order Set: s  r  i  p.

Read more about our Language curriculum in our Letter Series post here. 

p.s read here, Adrian using these beautiful Waldorf cards with wooden animals chunky alphabet puzzle at 28 months.