The sensory, or chopped letters are a valid support for children’s linguistic development. Let’s see when and how to use them
«A being eager to express himself needs a teacher who clearly teachs him words. Can family members act as masters? We usually do not help the child, we only repeat his stammer and if he had not an inner teacher he would not learn anything. This master pushes him to adults who speak to each other and do not turn to him. He pushes him to take over the language with that exactness that we do not offer him. Yet at one year of age the child could find, as in our schools, intelligent people who speak to him intelligently, “said Maria Montessori (The mind of the childGarzanti 2010).
Support linguistic development
Speak. Speak. Speak. Clearly, calm and using authentic terms. Since the beginning of life, talking to children as often as possible is what we can do to help them in linguistic development.
Everything has a specific, scientific name, which the child will easily remember, immediately. “Would you like to taste this courgette cream?” Is it more significant than “Do you want to taste this baby food?”. With newborns it is not easy to find what to talk about: a good strategy is the narrative of what is happeningbecause this reassures and in the meantime provides excellent linguistic stimuli. «Now I take off the sock, I slack the diaper. Do you feel the water how is lukewarm? Now I dry you ».
The adult must not fear to use scientific words by believing “difficult”, because they are not such. Memorize “pappa” or “soup” needs the use of the same energy. The child’s mind is a sponge that absorbs what the environment offers him. The more specific, detailed and attentive in language, the more the child will start when he starts talking. Making language “infantile” means impoverishing it and also means forcing the child to do a useless work of translation, from the language reserved for him to the language of the greats. «This is not a jelly! Tell well: mi-ni-stasto! ».
We should keep in mind that for the child the surrounding things do not yet have a name and therefore being able to know immediately that the hairy quadruped with tail and ears is a “dog” and not a “bau” is a great fortune!
The sensory periods of children
During their growth path, the children cross important sensory periods, or moments of life in which they have a particular sensitivity for the acquisition of certain skills.
In the sensory period of language, which opens with birth and ends around 5 years, the child is naturally predisposed to the acquisition of linguistic competence. In this period all that concerns language is for the extremely attractive child: it is in fact a social being biologically predisposed to communication.
Around 30 months the child lives that phase that Maria Montessori defines explosion of language: then what has absorbed since the beginning of life, which her mind has developed and ordered, turns into communication. The phrases are complete, verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives gradually find their location. An important moment of enrichment of the vocabulary begins for the child, with a considerable increase in competence in linguistic production.
Here at a certain point, around 4 years, the child asks for nothing more than: “What letter is this? “; “How is my letter?” This is the signal that the child entered the sensitive period of writing, a period preceding that of reading.
The grimmers
To support our child at home, chopped letters can be a valid support for linguistic development.
These are light wooden tablets (thick about 4 mm), square (of about 13.5 cm) and rectangular (for B, D, F, G, P, Q, T, Z) with the beef corners, which bring back to the center the sign corresponding to all the letters of the alphabet: the vowels in red and the consonants in blue. The letters are in relief, formed by grown -hazard paper not too large and glued to the center of the tablet.
They are arranged in a container, where they are standing, so that they are easily visible and taken. To present the work, you unroll a mat and three letters are placed, one next to the other. Always close to the carpet you can put a small bowl with a little water and a towel.
Work on the carpet delimits the work area allowing to maintain the ordered material. In addition, it is a way to protect the letters that, given their very important purpose (learning to write), must be treated with extreme care. Precisely for this form of protection, before starting to touch the letters, it is good to slightly wet the fingertips of the hand and dry them with the towel. This ritual has a double value: it makes the moment of the touch of the important and precious letters (the rites like very much to children, especially if carried out with tone and calm and slow gestures) and also the washing of the hands preserves the letters from possible residues on the fingers.
Why are the letters in italics?
Corsivo is preferred to the tiny printed because each letter has an proper sign that is not easily confusable, as happens with the letters of the tiny printed, where, for example, the DBPQ differ only in the positioning of the canal. Furthermore, The first signs that the child naturally trace are curved, rounded (like italics) and not straight (like the tiny printed), therefore the hand of the child is facilitated in making curved gestures.
- It is important to present the work of the letters with extreme simplicity: it is an exercise aimed only at touching the letters with index and thumbs, slowly, three times by letter. At the end of each touch, the corresponding sound must be pronounced, for example “a”
- The vowels are the first to present, then the consonants come
- You must never interrogate the baby
- A few letters are presented at a time. Three is a good number to start, then you are growing adding one or two depending on the child’s interest
- The muscle memory that comes into play by touching the letters facilitates the association between sign and sound. The hand needs training to become sure. After exercising on the chopped letters, and before moving on to the sheet, you can make a stop: the writing in the flour.
To check learning, it is advisable to carry out what is called the three -stroke lesson: I pronounce the sound corresponding to the sign, for example “a”; After the learning of the first half, I help the child in recognition, for example I ask “I tell me to?”; After the learning of the second half, the memory of the name will beato: “Do you remember the name of this letter?”. It is gradually and prepared, without ever forcing the child who, if frustrated, would move away from the subject.
Take a plastic tray (the best is the melamine, with the a little tall edges) and put the flour inside. With the hand you can reproduce the trace of the letters already known, keeping the hailted letter next to the tray, for the control of the error.
After describing the sensory value of the chopped letters it is easier to understand how much to bring them back to an iPad constitutes an action that impoverishes the experience and reduces its effectiveness.
