Montessori-Inspired Phonics Activities Using Wooden Cubes and Free Printables {Montessori Monday}

After seeing how much fun my almost-3-year-old granddaughter had with the Ten Apples Up On Top activities using Spielgaben wooden cubes and free apple printables, I wanted to prepare some more activities with the cubes. Since we focused on math activities last month, I prepared some Montessori-inspired phonics activities with Spielgaben wooden cubes and our free Montessori movable alphabet printable.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Spielgaben. All opinions are honest and my own. This post also contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).

In case you’re not familiar with Spielgaben toys, they are exceptionally high-quality educational toys designed for ages 3-12. You can see from the photo that the cabinet is very high quality and fits in well in a room with traditional Montessori materials. I love the new, easily removable drawers in version 4.

The Spielgaben complete set comes with over 700 pages of full-color printed learning materials. These printed materials help you as a parent or teacher easily use Spielgaben toys educationally with your child and/or students.

Note: The yarn balls in set 1 are fine for babies and toddlers. The other sets should only be used with ages 3 and older unless your toddler no longer mouths objects or you are constantly supervising your toddler during an activity using the materials.

Spielgaben Materials Used in This Post

For this post, I used the natural wooden cubes from Spielgaben Sets 3-6.

Montessori-Inspired Phonics Activities Using Wooden Cubes and Free Printable

Here are some ideas of 3-dimensional phonics activities you can prepare with wooden cubes and free printables:

(Note: For all activities you’ll need wooden cubes and our free printable Montessori movable alphabet (1″ letter tiles). If you cut just inside the lines, each letter will fit perfectly taped on the Spielgaben wooden cubes. There are 3 fonts available: manuscript, D’Nealian, and cursive. You can just use one on one side of each cube, or you can use one on one side and another on the opposite side. I  used manuscript on one side and cursive on the opposite, since I want my granddaughter to feel comfortable with both.)

Note: If you don’t have the complete Spielgaben set, you can get 1″ wooden cubes on Amazon.

Matching Letter Cubes with Movable Alphabet or Other Letters

For this activity, I just used the letter cubes prepared with our free movable alphabet along with small Montessori movable alphabet letters s, m, t, a, p, f, c. (You could use any type of lowercase letters rather than the Montessori movable alphabet letters.) I used Montessori Services baskets to hold the materials.

This is an activity to see if your child can match letters and place them in the proper direction. I set the letter cubes out on the rug, and then Zoey said each phonetic sound while tracing the movable alphabet letter.

After that, she matched the letters on the rug. Zoey really liked the feel of both the movable alphabet letters and the letter cubes, so it was a great way to reinforce letter sounds. (Note: We always do our floor work on a Montessori Services rug.)

Matching Phonetic Objects and Beginning Letter Sound Cubes

For this activity, I  used the letter cubes prepared with our free movable alphabet. I used the cursive alphabet here, although you could use the manuscript or D’Nealian fonts if you prefer. Because I have manuscript fonts on the back of each cube, a child learning cursive can check his or her work with the manuscript letters. I used Montessori Services language objects and Montessori Services baskets to hold the materials.

This shows part of the completed layout.

Spelling Words with Letter Cubes on a Word Mat

For this activity, I used a basket of the prepared letter cubes, a free word mat from Teaching Is a Work of Art at Teachers Pay Teachers, a Montessori Services basket, and a Multicraft tray to hold everything.

Often children can sound out and spell words before they can read. You could have your child see how many words he or she can sound out and make with the letter cubes.

Using Letter Cubes to Spell CVC Words to Match Pictures

For this activity, the child will spell words to match CVC pictures. I used the CVC Spelling Fun Freebie by Andrea Mason at Teachers Pay Teachers. I just placed the necessary letter cubes in the letter basket.

Here’s an example of one of the spelled words. It really does make it more interesting to have the letters on the wooden cubes. I liked the feel and 3-dimensional aspect of the activities, too!

All My Spielgaben Posts

Many of these include links to free printables! (Click on an image to go to the related blog post. The gallery is ordered according to publication date with my latest post at the top.)

Version 4 of Spielgaben Educational Toys 

I highly recommend Spielgaben as an amazing educational material for home or school. Even though the toys aren’t inexpensive, they’re definitely worth the price because of the high quality of materials and number of years your children or students can use them.

Special deal for my readers!