Our Language Shelves

I recently got a chance to freshen up our language shelves. Our shelves include beginning, middle and advanced reading work as well as spelling and a bit of word study. I still need to do some refreshing of our grammar section so I will not show those shelves at this time but I hope you enjoy the peek. Now our shelves sit in a tight space under a window so the pictures were tough to take with a glaring background but it's really about the material anyway, right?

So here is our shelf--I laugh because I have already added a few new things for writing to the top section and a basket of cd roms for spelling, typing and reading practice.

This is our beginning reading shelf.

Here is the pink series work. In the back are cards for identifying end sounds and middle sound. In the middle is pink series picture cards to use with the moveable alphabet and in the front row are pink series cards and labels for reading and matching. To the right is a container of word books 1-4.

Also on the bottom shelf is a basket of mystery balls for word building. The balls are from Lakeshore Learning and contain an object and the letters to spell the object. And finally to the right is a Rhyming Word puzzle.

This is our intermediate reading shelf otherwise know as blue series work.

In the back is card sets for ending blends, the basket in the front contains blend cards for general practice and in the container on the right is objects and blank writing paper for spelling practice with you guessed it, blends. Also on the shelf, from right to left, is Scrabble Junior, Bob Books and a special gem given to me by a friend, Learn To Read Treasure Hunts.

This is also blue series work--in the back are cards to fill in either beginning, middle or ending blends, the blue bucket contains sentence strips for reading and the other material is blue series cards and labels.

Finally, our top shelf. On the top shelf from left to right--Bananagrams game, the Spelling Power Activity Box, spelling activity cards, letter and stamps for spelling activities and our activity envelopes from Take it to Your Seat Phonics Centers.

It is not necessary to feel like you have to spend a lot of money to create centers like ours, shop garage sales, thrift stores and children's consignment stores. There are also a lot of great sites to print free materials or purchase them inexpensively. Great free sites:

http://www.montessorimaterials.org/index.html

http://montessoriforlearning.com/FreeDownloadIndex.html


http://www.wikisori.org/index.php/Main_Page

Other sites that I have purchased printable materials from:

http://www.montessoriprintshop.com/Montessori_Print_Shop_Home.html

http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to share your thoughts, I'd love to hear from you.