Assalaamu ‘alaikum.
Remember when I said that I was going to stick with the Montessori method of teaching the sounds of the English letters rather than the names? Well, I can honestly say that by the Will of Allaah I’ll be sticking with it. I have found that Junayd is really picking up the letters quite quickly and I’m only focussing on the small letters. Although I only teach him the small letters he also recognises the capital letters too, mashaa`Allaah. How do I know? Well, one day he decided to rummage through a game we have which is similar to scrabble and out of the blue he runs after his father shouting, “Abi! Abi! Look, /a/!” My husband was kinda like “yeah” ‘cos he didn’t have a clue what the boy was going on about [or maybe it was because he was preoccupied with something else]. But after a while I realised that Junayd had picked up the letter A [the capital a because there are no small letters in the game] and was showing off his find, mashaa`Allaah.
I was quite surprised because I have never sat down to teach him the capital letters, but maybe because they are always paired with the small letters on the poster we have on his wall, he recongised they must be one and the same. **dunno**
Anyhow, I wanted to see if he really knew what he was talking about so I played a little game with him. I placed a whole load of tiled letters from the game onto the floor and asked him to pick up all the /a/’s. Mashaa`Allaah he did just that. Was I estatic? You bet I was! There was a little hiccup where he picked an upside-down V, but I could see where his thought process was taking him – afterall, an upside-down V looks like an A without the line in the middle. After the A’s I asked him to do the B’s and mashaa`Allaah he picked them out.
It’s just so great when you can see your efforts resulting in positive outcomes, mashaa`Allaah. After stress and whatnot, you want to make sure your child IS learning. All praise is due to Allaah.
Enough rambling!
Was-salaamu ‘alaikum
~ Umm Junayd.
Schooling & Home 
Asalaam ‘Alaikum:
I have also stumbled upon the fact that I think this is going to be the best way to teach my girls – nothing else has worked. They like hands-on materials a lot. Just wanted you to know . . . you’re not alone.
I’m getting ready to purchase “Montessori Read and Write” by Lynne Lawrence. It has a lot of good ideas on how to put these materials to work. Not sure if you already knew about it – but thought I’d share.
Asalaam’ Alaikum,
Sumayyah Umm Sadiqah wa Asma
Wa ‘alaikumus-salaam.
Junayd likes to sit and repeat… he seems to learn really well that way. I really try to reinforce what he’s learn because I can sit for hours just repeating the same thing because he’ll TELL me to!
Jazaakillaahu khairan for sharing the book. I really do need to purchase some books of my own – always too busy reading to Junayd.
Was-salaamu ‘alaikum
~ Umm Junayd.