Montessori Sound Baskets – Explained
Unless you’ve been exposed to the Montessori philosophy and teaching method, you may not have heard of or seen sound baskets.
Sound baskets are a simple, straightforward method to spark understanding of letter sounds.
Read a full description here.
The Benefits
✔️ Active engagement
✔️ Employs Reasoning
✔️ Employs Critical Thinking
✔️ Reduces screen time
☑️ See study on impacts of screen-time on youth development
✔️ Encourages independent learning and exploration
How to Use Sound Baskets At-home
Formal training isn’t necessary to use Montessori sound basket principles at home. You may not have the carefully developed and constructed Montessori materials, but you can follow the foundations to make it work for your family and use items from your home.
My daughter attended a Montessori school. Each week a student was assigned a letter/sound and would take the community basket to fill with items from home.
NOTE: A bucket, pail or pillowcase can be used, as long as it's easy for the little one to fill and carry.
You will probably need to establish a few parameters so your child is safe and doesn’t pick-up breakable or valuable objects. It’s your house – you make the rules.
A bucket of plastic animals covers a lot of phonetic sounds and provides good examples of hard and soft consonants, e.g. gorilla and giraffe. Encourage your child to explore their room and consider objects they interact with on a regular basis.
You can choose to strategically place a few items to help jumpstart the exercise. You know your child best.
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Encourage your child to think about how a single item may have more than one name. If you read our “Toy Blocks” blog post or watched the video, you learned how blocks can be used as teaching tools for math and language arts. Blocks are also cubes. A plush kitty is a stuffed animal, so it counts for the “s” sound.
When working with short and long vowel sounds, remember that it’s perfectly fine for the sound to appear in the middle of the word, as reflected in the sounds card.
Reviewing Choices
Once your child has collected all the items, review what’s in it. If any don’t meet the challenge, ask the child to say the object’s name out loud. Ask if that is a good fit for the basket. Carefully guide to the correct conclusion, if necessary. This should be a confidence building activity that can be repeated. You want your child to look forward to future ones.
Final Thoughts
Use this exercise to sow the seeds to independent thinking and learning. It’s an excellent tool to ignite a passion for growth and discovery. It lends itself to tailoring to your family, e.g. siblings can work together.
Please leave a comment with your experience.
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