To Maria Montessori, the teaching of grammar was at the center of her language curriculum for elementary age children. Today, it still remains a critical element in the teaching of a complete language program in a Montessori environment. At this age, grammar is being presented at an impressionistic level and later on in their later elementary years, they will explore these concepts on a more formal level.

This week the first year group has enjoyed learning more about adjectives. We started the lesson reviewing the previous parts of speech learned earlier in the year (nouns and articles) and used descriptive words to describe our nouns. These words are called adjectives! As a follow up work to practice this grammar, the first years love to use the grammar box.

The second years are continuing their study of the adverb- a complex part of speech. They are learning that an adverb supports the verb and they tell us how to do an action. In Montessori grammar, just like the verb, the adverb is also represented as a ball. The adverb is a smaller ball than the verb because it is less important than the verb itself. This group is also enjoying using a grammar box to practice this work!

In the third grade year, the children begin the process of sentence analysis. The aims of this work are to study how words are used in the context of sentences and to make logical analyses of those sentences. Right now the third years are learning how to analyze simple sentences with subject, verb and direct object. They are beginning the process of asking themselves, “What is the action?” “Who is it that did the action?” “What/whom received the action?”