Transition to the moveable alphabet: letter recognition
After your child has spent quite a bit of time with the sandpaper letters with objects and completed several pages of her letter sound book, she can try letter recognition activities with the moveable alphabet.
Transitioning to this iconic Montessori writing material is an exciting and significant step. Your child is on her way to writing and reading!
But before jumping into writing words with the moveable letters, your child must first explore and get to know this hands-on material for letter recognition and familiarity.
In this post, I’ll share the transition to the moveable alphabet lesson I learned from my teacher training. I’ll also share four additional letter recognition activities to try and how it went with my four-year-old daughter, Annie, at home!
In This Post
Why is letter recognition important?
Letter recognition activities help young children with:
- Associating the letter sound with letter symbol
- preparation for writing and reading
A recent large study by Francis Huang at the University of Missouri helped show the importance of preschool education in recognizing letters and academic success. He says:
“Alphabet recognition has been shown to be one of the strongest and most reliable predictors of reading ability and, on its own, letter name knowledge can be as effective as administering an entire reading readiness test. On average, the more letters children can recognize and identify at an early age, the better their future reading achievement and the lower the risk of academic failure."
The Montessori transition to the moveable alphabet activity is wonderful practice and repetition for alphabet recognition, while setting up your child for writing and reading success.
How to do the Montessori transition to the moveable alphabet lesson
What you will need
A set of sandpaper letters.
A moveable alphabet is traditionally a box with 26 partitions containing letters, several in each section. The letters are blue and red, the same as the Sandpaper Letters. They are also shaped the same (print or cursive).
Note: these materials come in either print or cursive. I support both, but be sure that you are consistent. For example, continue your child’s journey with a moveable print alphabet if you have been using sandpaper print letters. Same thing if you are using cursive.
* I created a moveable print alphabet printable. If you’d like to download it, sign up for the resource library at the bottom of this post. If you’re already a subscriber, use the updated password in my newest email.
You could purchase a moveable alphabet online at various Montessori materials websites, Amazon, or Etsy. They range in price, with the most affordable set in the thirty to forty dollar range, but premium sets could cost hundreds of dollars.
You could make your moveable letters DIY. There are several ideas you could find online. You could also print out letters like in the printable I made for you.
Several years ago, I made a DIY set out of clear glass gems from a craft store, printed out small letters, and glued the letters to the bottom of the gems with mod podge. I made this set for a four-year-old girl that I was tutoring.
The DIY glass gem set came out nice! I used partitioned craft boxes to keep the letter gems in separate boxes. In the picture, you see two boxes for the letters, but you could also find a larger box with more sections.
Note: The glass gems are very small and are a choking hazard. Please be sure your child is old enough to use them and be sure to closely supervise your child.
Note: Keep in mind that the youngest children should use a traditional Montessori moveable alphabet with tactile letters so that the children can feel the letter shape in their hands. Although, it is okay to use gems or letter cards for your moveable letters as an alternative option.
Step-by-step moveable alphabet transition lesson
Invite your child to do the activity on a work rug.
Bring the sandpaper letters that your child already knows.
Bring the movable alphabet.
Sit on your child’s dominant side.
Line up the sandpaper letters across the top of the rug.
“Ask your child to give you the sound of the letters. This is a quick review – of 3rd period of the Three Period Lesson.
Sensitize your fingers by rubbing your hands together until warm. It helps to enhance the tactile experience of touching the sandpaper.
Trace the first letter and say the sound. Find the same letter from the movable letter box and place it beneath the sandpaper letter. Say while pointing to the sandpaper letter, “This is /s/.” Point to the moveable letter and say, “This is /s/. They are the same.
Repeat in the same manner for each letter.
State that these moveable letters are the same as the sandpaper bigger letters. They are smaller and can help us write many more words than one set of the big letters. “We use the moveable letters to make words.”
Take away sandpaper big letters and let movable small alphabet letters stand alone.
Ask your child to find and move down several letters.
Replace the letters in the alphabet box and return them to the shelf. (This sorting helps your child realize the various positions of letters in the box.)
Here are the 4 letter recognition activities
1. Letter Hunt
Choose three or four sandpaper “big” letters and place them on the rug on the floor.
Collect all the same moveable “small” alphabet letters that go with the big letters you chose and hide them randomly around the room.
Look at the first big letter on the rug. Walk around the room and remember the letter in your mind.
Find all the matching small alphabet letters for that letter, and place them next to the matching sandpaper big letter.
Complete all of the letters in this way.
Tip: Be sure to count how many of each small letter you hid so that you are sure to find all of them.
2. Letter Sorting
Choose about 4 or 5 sandpaper “big” letters and place them on the rug on the floor.
Collect all the matching moveable “small” alphabet letters from the box and place them mixed up in the basket. Place the basket on the rug.
Choose one small letter from the basket at a time and place them under the matching big letter.
To make this more challenging, you could do more letters simultaneously, or even all of the letters of the alphabet A-Z and make it a massive work!
3. The A-Z letter train
Another idea for an enormous activity for recognizing letters is to place all the sandpaper “big” letters out simultaneously and pretend that they are train tracks to make an A-Z letter train.
My daughter, Annie, has been so excited about trains lately. Since we’ve been in the holiday season, she has enjoyed The Polar Express book and movie and we have a polar express train in our living room.
We set up the train tracks in a square shape, and one by one, Annie placed the big letters from A-Z alongside the train tracks.
Once the A-Z sandpaper “big” letters were in place, she found the matching moveable “small” alphabet letters to add to her A-Z train!
4. Name writing with crayon rubbings
As a classroom teacher, I remember the children loved crayon rubbings with sandpaper letters! A fun activity you could try is to choose the letters in your child’s name and do crayon rubbings to write your child’s name.
Your child’s name might have the same letter more than once, like /n/ in my daughter’s name, Annie. You can show your child that you need to rub the letter twice to write her name.
Once you have completed the crayon rubbings, your child can practice writing her name with the moveable “small” alphabet letters! This could be one of the first experiences with writing with the moveable alphabet.
Concluding Thoughts about the Letter Recognition activities
The A-Z train was a big hit with Annie; she was so excited to work with her polar express train! She had to walk back and forth several times to get the next letter for the large and small letters, which is excellent for children who need to move.
Montessori said that young children of this age are in the sensitive period for movement. Incorporating a lot of back-and-forths moving around the room is a fantastic example of integrating movement into your lessons.
The transition to the moveable letters highlights the importance of recognizing letters. Young children must explore and familiarize themselves with letters in different forms and experience notes in different hands-on materials, in books, on cards, other print materials, games, activities, and signs they come across daily.
Exploring letters and phonetic sounds frequently and differently will help children move on to writing and reading with success. Transitioning to the moveable letter lesson sets an excellent foundation for recognizing and experiencing letters.
This is the last lesson of Part 2: Exploration of Letters and Sounds. In the next series of blog posts in Part 3, I will share lessons about writing. The next blog post will go into the first lessons of writing words with the moveable alphabet!
Have you worked with letter recognition activities or the moveable alphabet with your child? Leave a comment below!
More Montessori Resources
If you liked this post, you’ll also like:
* I created a moveable print alphabet printable. If you’d like to download it, sign up for the resource library at the bottom of this post. If you’re already a subscriber, use the updated password in my newest email.
Transition to the moveable alphabet: letter recognition
This is a handy printable to have! So many great learning projects to do!
Hi Nicole,
It’s great to know that you found the letter recognition activity helpful!
This is really helpful. Thank you for this detailed guide. Will try to find a set of moveable alphabet online and will start with this activity. Appreciate all the tips.
Hi CLarice,
I’m happy that you found the letter recognition activity to be helpful!
What a great set of letters. These are wonderful activities for developing better letter recognition.
Such a great way to get kids involved. Thank you for sharing.
Great activities! This also seems like something that would keep their interest.
Awesome ideas! Will definitely be saving this for the future, although it can’t hurt to start young!!
Hi Katie,
That’s wonderful! I’m happy that you like the Montessori letter recognition activities. If you’d like to learn about oral language activities for little ones (age two and up), check out my blog post: https://brightlittleowl.com/oral-language-development/
Thanks for the tips. We have one just starting with letter recognition. Montessori products are the best!
Hi Pedja,
I’m so glad the Montessori letter recognition activities are helpful!
What a great and stimulating way to boost learning! Love your creativity and tips! Thank you for sharing this.
This is very helpful, especially to those with kids at school.
Your daughter is going to have a great foundation with your organized systematic teaching! Thanks for sharing!
Learnt something new today! Will be trying this with the kids I tutor 😆
Such fun ideas to keep little learners engaged and having fun while learning important skills to support literacy! Thank you for sharing!
This is a fantastic post. Your pictures are great and the ideas are really fun and educational for little ones.
Hi Debbie,
I’m so glad that you found the Letter Recognition activities helpful!
This was one of my favorite activities when I was a director at a Montessori preschool
This is very very insightful, thank you so much. I know nothing about letter recognition but I wish I knew! These techniques are fundamental and they would make the entire difference.
I haven’t done any letter recognition activities or the moveable alphabet yet but I love the idea of the A-Z train. It sounds fun 🙂
Hi Tina,
If you have a little one that loves trains, doing this Montessori letter recognition activity with a train set is so exciting!
This is pretty cool and the kids would enjoy as well as learn something. I will try this with my little brother. Thank you for sharing!