One way that the pandemic has really been interesting for our family is just the shear amount of time that we have been home learning with our kids. We were given the unique opportunity to homeschool last year and now spend quite a bit of time at home this year. In that time, we have been able to more directly support a lot of the Montessori learning that would normally happen at school or after school.
Being neurodivergent, grammar was one area where Henry has needed a little extra support. So this past year and a half has given us a lot of opportunity to focus on grammar work here at home and help him master this particular subject area. Here are two ways we supported his Montessori grammar work here at home.
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Books
A Montessori teacher friend recommended this excellent series of books to us called "If You Were A..." The books focus on each function of speech. They are fun little stories/rhymes that also define how each works. Many go into depth about different types of the part of speech (different types of nouns, for example.)
One of my favorite parts of these were at the end of each book there was a fun little activity or game to play to solidify the concepts introduced in the book. These were all highly engaging for Henry and kept the learning really interactive and fun.
(These books are also made about a bunch of different language concepts and we used many of those as well. They were all well loved here!)
Grammar Bingo
Once Henry had a basic understanding of each of the functions of speech I created a game for us to play together. I've found for Montessori elementary kids in general that supporting learning through games is a great way to really engage them in the work. So, I made a bingo game using the grammar symbols.
I just did it by hand with this stencil, but I'm sure you could also easily make on a computer. I made a grid with a mixture of each of the traditional Montessori grammar symbols for each game board. Then I just made a ton of different words to correspond with the different parts of speech.
To play, we would just scramble the words in a basket, then take turns picking. Then we would match the word to the part of speech it corresponded with. The first to get bingo would win. This was a huge huge hit and really helped him to solidify these concepts. Occasionally, I would switch up the words so that it continued to be a challenge.
These were both fairly easy, fun ways to practice grammar at home in a Montessori friendly way.
