Pink secret/quiet box
What is the Pink secret/quiet box?
The Pink secret box is a box in the language area of a Montessori classroom that contains six-eight pieces of folded paper with one three-letter phonetic word on each piece.
How is the Secret box presented?
For this activity, the child is encouraged to sound out, blend, and read different words in their head. The directress begins by asking the child if he knows what a secret is, and if he does not know, she tells him a secret is something only you know.
She places the box in front of him and tells him that this box is a ‘secret box’ and inside the secret box are little secrets that need to be read. The directress takes the first one out of the box, unfolds the piece of paper, and reads the word inside her head, she then folds it up and places it aside.
The directress reminds the child to read the pieces of paper in his head as it is a 'secret. He is encouraged to sound out, blend, and read the rest of the folded ‘secrets’ inside the box. Once the child has read all of them, he is asked to pack them away back in the box. The directress tells him that now he has read secrets of his own that no one knows about.
Pink secret box
What skills does the child acquire by doing this activity?
This activity internalises the reading experience for the child, it makes reading more meaningful for him, this activity is more challenging as there are no pictures to assist the child as well as no guidance from the directress, and this activity gives the child further practice in reading three-letter phonetic words.
The Montessori language learning process
There is a step by step process for all language materials in a Montessori classroom. The directress must first complete the pink reading materials (three-letter phonetic words), then the blue reading materials (four or more letter phonetic words), and finally she moves on to the green reading materials (phonograms e.g. ee, th, sh, ay, ie etc).
The directress presents the Blue secret/quiet box in the same manner as the Pink secret/quiet box. The difference is there are now four or more letter words instead of three.
Looking for more Montessori activities?
Here is a list of all the Montessori Language activities. These include Early Language, Pink Language Materials, Green Language Materials, Later Language, and Grammar. Just click on the page you want to learn about to go there.