Parents need assurance from teachers that the focus of this activity is not reading the words but building them. Dr. Montessori wrote of the power of a very simple activity to help bridge children into the world of reading. She encouraged her directresses to assemble a collection of interesting small objects, slips of paper, and a pencil. After asking children to name each object, she wrote the name as the children watched. She then simply placed the labels next to corresponding objects and repeated the words.
Children see the concrete connection between the word and the object.
The teacher then invites the child to mix up the labels, look at them individually, recall the word and find the appropriate object. Often children recognize the beginning sound of the words. They use this and the overall configuration of the word as they decode. In Montessori classrooms, teachers incorporate both phonetic and whole-word strategies. The leading reading researchers acknowledge that we still do not know exactly how children learn to read.