Grammar Materials Bring Language to Life
In Montessori, we have many different kinds of activities to teach the parts of speech. Some may be a bit of a surprise – who would think that a farm play set could be used to teach grammar? I love the idea of kids using familiar objects and animals to learn more about language.
Here are a few of the common grammar materials:
The Farm Game
This activity, like the one seen here from Alison’s Montessori, is common in the 3-6 classroom. It usually consists of a wooden farm set, including a barn and miniature farm animals. In addition, the child is provided with small cards that have different nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech that might be used on the farm.
A very young child might simply play with the set with a friend, using language skills to identify the animals and their movements. They might use individual labels for the nouns (“sheep”, “goat”). An older child might make longer sentences using more parts of speech, like “The goat jumped over the red fence”.
While the traditional wooden farm set is lovely, it’s also a bit pricey. I’ve heard of people who have found less expensive plastic sets (some are still very nice). I personally bought a feltboard farm set and used that and it worked beautifully.
Grammar Symbol Charts & Definitions
Nomenclature cards and charts can be used to familiarize the child with the symbols and definitions. The child can be asked to give an example of each part of speech, or write a sentence using several of the parts of speech together. You may want to hang a grammar symbol chart on the wall of the language area for reference purposes.
Here, the children take the symbols and apply them to real sentences. Sentence cards or strips are prepared or bought by the teacher and the child is given a box or container of symbols that are printed on paper or cut out of wood. The child looks at each word in the sentence and decides what part of speech it is. They then place the appropriate symbol above the word.
A reversal of this exercise is to give the child prepared strips with symbols in various orders. The child then thinks of words to make a sentence that fits the pattern.
I’ll be honest with you. I’m not a big fan of the wooden grammar boxes. They are expensive, and to my mind, not essential for grammar studies. The ones from Nienhuis don’t list the words in the correct order for English grammar. I called Nienhuis once to ask why some of the boxes have such strange word order, and they were unable to tell me. If anyone knows, please share!
I feel that great results can be achieved by using the grammar cards alone, as mentioned below. If you do have the grammar boxes, you would use the grammar cards with them to form sentences. The Grammar Boxes offered by Alison’s Montessori (linked to above) have movable labels for the parts of speech, so that you can change the order as needed. Those make more sense to me than the kind with fixed (painted) labels from Nienhuis.
For this activity you will need cards with words on them for each part of speech. The child sets them out to create sentences. For instance, they may set out cards (one for each word) that say: A book is on the table. They’ve used an article, noun, verb, preposition, article, and noun.
Then, they could take various adjective cards (“blue”, “smooth”) and try them out in front of the nouns in the sentence. By switching out adjectives, nouns, verbs, and prepositions, the variations are endless.
Reading (or Sentence) Analysis
In Reading Analysis Set 1, the child is introduced to the words and phrases that make up sentences. The first lesson involves only the subject, verb, and direct object. The patterns become more complex, with those parts in different combinations (two subjects with one direct object, or two direct objects with one subject).
Then, the child is shown a larger and more complex chart, Reading Analysis Set 2, that includes all the different types of subjects and predicates, answering questions like “why?”, “when?”, “from what?”, and “with whom?”.
You guessed it…
The one thing all of these materials have in common, like all Montessori materials, is that they are hands-on. Children are matching, moving, and manipulating words and symbols to create patterns and sentences. This kind of tactile work helps solidify the parts of speech in a very special way.
If you’ve missed the earlier installments, you can find them here: Part 1 and Part 2, and the last installment here: Part 4.
I love the idea of using a felt board farm set. It can be easily stored and is more practical for homeschhols. Thanks for all the grammar posts!
Glad you like the posts! I admit I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it did.
There’s one more grammar post on the way, so look for it today or tomorrow!
I really like the idea of the Montessori way of education!
I am a proud Montessorian as well. I love the games and Montessori hands on activities.
We just bought the grammar materials from neinhuis but can’t afford the boxes. I was wondering if you had come accorss a good way of storing these materials in the classroom so that they are accessible and easy to use but not in £600 pounds worth of boxes!!!
Thanks
Anna xx
Hi, Anna! Wow, that’s an interesting question. I have never seen the full set of Nienhuis grammar materials, so I can’t say for sure. Maybe you could browse The Container Store website until you found boxes or containers that looked good, then ordered them either from The Container Store or found them somewhere else.
Thanks Lori. I don’t think we have the Container store here in the uk – I have found a 40 drawer multi-drawer cabinet for the smaller works but nothing yet for the work that has strips as well as cards. I’ll keep looking!
I also bought the Nienhuis grammar materials but not the boxes. I ended up buying the boxes at IFIT (Montessori Equipment) online from Canada, worked well for my needs and the price was right. I have also seen the grammar materials displayed in regular wooden trays and boxes, with a grammar symbol attached to the front.
Hi there…I was hoping to know if you will be selling the command/exercise cards – that go with the word cards for the grammar boxes. They are sold at Alison’s, but are a bit expensive and are not in your color scheme.
Thanks so much, Cherine
Hi, Cherine! I have no plans to make additional grammar materials at this point, but maybe someday!
Just found your post about the grammar materials – I love it
Regarding the Nienhuis issues – I can’t explain it either, but I can say this: in my AMI elementary training, they made it clear that the grammar box material does not come as functional as it should from Nienhuis and there are adaptations to be made to their materials – specifically grammar boxes (but there are other materials that cause issues as well).
The grammar boxes were Montessori’s way of bringing an abstract subject into a concrete material so that young children (young elementary) could truly “get it” without the tedium of grammar books (which she still want children to have on hand as a resource – so not getting rid of them entirely but have a few on hand for research, looking to see what particular grammarians say (because not all agree!) and to help the child learn to form his own opinion).
I meant to add as well that different children need differing amounts and repetitions of the grammar boxes. Some need very little, some need every filler box with lots of repetition and most need something in the middle. It is hard to judge beforehand what a child needs – but as with all Montessori materials (especially elementary!), resale value is quite good, especially if any necessary adaptations have already been made.
Hi, Jessica! I like the more modern version of the grammar boxes, like those from Alison’s Montessori, where the order of the grammar categories can be changed around to fit the user’s language patterns. It’s like taking the original idea and making it one better! Hopefully Nienhuis will follow suit at some point.
I agree with you completely about the use of the grammar materials as being a great way to teach grammar without the tedium of worksheets and workbooks. I am a huge advocate of the grammar materials (as you can see from the four posts I ended up writing after planning only one!) However, I don’t know that all of the grammar materials are necessary for the child to internalize the grammar concepts. If any could be skipped, it would be the boxes, especially the older version that is incorrect anyway.
Thanks for stopping by!
Just in case anyone is intersted in the elementary filling box materials, and how to store and present it I have a couple of pointers! First, the filling boxes are not necessary, I bought clear plastic pencil cases from Staples. The cards can been seen through the lids so they don’t need to be colour coded. Second, I have found, as Lori has, that the wooden trays that are sold on Nienhuis are completely unneccesary. I am contemplating making a set of felt rectangles, one for each set of boxes but that could be placed on a work mat and keep the labels in the right order. However, they are not necessary. I find that by the time children get to this stage they automatically know what order to put the cards in, and having them in the wrong order in the tray would be a hinderance. Hope that helps (and saves money!)
Great tips, thank you so much for sharing!