Phonogram Folders & Pink, Blue, Green series

Question:

I'm wondering if the phonogram folders kit correlates with the pink series in montessori or the blue or the green?

Julia says:

Great question. The Pink, Blue, and Green series is, surprisingly, an invention of a Montessori teacher. It's not actually something Dr. Montessori prescribed and it is not in the AMI Montessori training. That said, it can be a convenient way for adults to think about the progression from simplest phonetic words (pink series), to longer phonetic words (blue series), to phonetic words with phonograms (green series). But it is for the adult, not the young child.

Believe it or not, the young child doesn't need us to organize the words they are learning by short a's or long o's. The reason is that we don't only teach them some vowels and not others. In the Montessori program, we teach children the sounds of all 26 letters and 17 key sound phonograms. The developing mind isn't limited to reading only certain things at certain times. Sometimes, we may need to group like words together to scaffold a particular child, but this is not the norm.

So, the children can be well served if you just have two sets of phonetic objects/reading cards on your shelf at one time. The first one is for completely phonetic words and the second one is for completely phonetic words that contain one of the key sound phonograms. Each week, swap out the objects/cards in each box or cloth pouch so that they always have variety. 

With that in mind, because the phonogram folders are focusing on phonogram spelling variations, they would definitely follow after the children have had some experience reading words with phonograms (green series). Actually, as the children gain more experience writing and reading beginning books, they will naturally start to notice variations in spelling. That is the perfect time to introduce the phonogram folders!

I'm hoping that the lesson plan included in the materials is clear but please let me know if you need more information. We also have a short video about how to use these on our website and on our YouTube channel.

I hope this helps!