Language

"The development of language is part of the development of the personality, for words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people." Maria Montessori

As long as a child is exposed to some language in his early life, he will almost always learn to speak. We can do so much to enrich these offerings, to give the child a greater wealth of words, but we can not make him learn to speak. The same cannot be said for writing or reading. These, we teach. Writing and reading require instruction of some sort and require some degree of effort by the child. The child must exert on the components of our language to build it for himself. He must overcome each of these steps:

Spoken Language: create an internal dictionary and practice using the words in it.

Phonemic Awareness: learn the sounds within words and the sounds/symbols of our alphabet.

Creating Words (Writing): learn to put those sounds/symbols together to make words.

Reading: Learn to decode those sounds/symbols to decipher words