Montessori Beads

When it comes to math manipulatives for young children, Dr. Maria Montessori was so ahead of her time.  The bead stair is an excellent example of beautiful manipulatives that help young children grow a strong mathematical sense.   While our older students know about Montessori beads, we spent some time this week teaching our younger students about them.  It is a goal that children will be able to internalize the quantities represented by each color so that they can learn skills of counting on, counting back, addition and subtraction.

We worked together to make 'beads' out of paper for the number stair.  1 red circle, 2 greens, etc.  This represents how the Montessori bead stair actually is depicted.  The children have really enjoyed interacting with this work.  Number recognition and quantity is important for this work, but also being able to physically set it up in the shape of a triangle can be tricky!

This work has the child matching the quantity card to the bead.

In this work the child is counting the beads illustrated in the bead picture and placing their Halloween eraser on the number that matches.  Each card has three numbers for the child to choose from.  The child must be able to count,  with one to one correspondence and have the ability to identity the proper number to be successful.

Additional pictures from our week.  Enjoy!