The Montessori language curriculum is designed to build up language skills using three inter-related areas: phonics, visual comprehension, and understanding.

Children learn letter shapes and their associated sounds (phonics), and use these to build words. Initially these are simple three-letter words which contain one of the five basic vowel sounds - a, e, i, o, and u - and single consonants. All the sounds are used in their basic phonic form. For example: mug, hat, tin, top, bat.

Such words form the Pink Series, and our Pink Series boxes contain items to encourage the children and develop their understanding: they recognise the objects or pictures, and then spell them out using individual moving letters.

Pink box 1 contains six small objects, corresponding to the words;
Pink box 2 has six picture cards;
Pink box 3 has six objects and matching word cards;
Pink box 4 has six word cards and pictures.
Pink box 5 is the mystery box and contains six folded word cards.

Suitable items for these boxes can be chosen from our Pink Series.

The children then progress to using longer words with consonant blends, such as drum, clock, nest, and stand. These form the Blue Series.

Blue box 1 contains six objects which use initial consonant blends, for example: frog.
Blue box 2 uses final consonant blends, as in milk; it has six picture cards.
Blue box 3 has six objects and six word cards using both initial and final consonant blends; both may appear in the same word (e.g., print).
Blue box 4 usually explores a particular sound and this will be repeated in each of the six word and picture cards. It may contain double consonant sounds such as double ‘ll’ as in bell or it may have consonant digraphs as in ‘sh’ for ship.
Blue box 5 is the mystery box and contains six folded word cards, some of these may be simple blends and some will be longer phonic words such as splendid. The schwa vowel may also be included at this level.

Suitable items for these boxes can be chosen from our Blue Series.

Many of the objects in the Pink and Blue Series are small enough to be used in multiples in the singular and plural grammar box.