Linear Counting in Montessori: Bead Chains, Teens and Tens

The materials, in order

1. Teen boards (Séguin board A) with golden ten bars and colored bead bars: the numbers 11 to 19 as “ten and one, ten and two…”
2. Ten boards (Séguin board B): counting by tens to 90, then filling in the units from 1 to 99.
3. The hundred board: placing numeral tiles from 1 to 100 in order.
4. The short bead chains: chains for each number from 1 to 10 squared (the 5 chain has 5 bars of 5 beads, 25 beads in all). The child counts every bead and places small arrows at each multiple.
5. The long bead chains: the cubes of 1 to 10, and the hundred chain and thousand chain, laid out across the room.

What it builds

• Fluent counting far beyond 10, with an image of how big the numbers are (the thousand chain is long).
• Skip counting, which prepares multiplication.
• An early, sensorial impression of squares and cubes, which returns in the elementary years.

Age

Usually from about 4 to 6 years in the Children’s House, after the child is secure with numbers to 10 and has worked with the golden beads.

At home

You don’t need the full bead cabinet. Counting a long line of real objects, writing number cards for each ten, and stringing beads in groups of five or ten give the same experience. See Montessori math beads and the move from concrete to abstract.

Common misunderstandings

• “It’s just counting to 1,000.” The chains also give an image of squares and cubes and prepare multiplication.
• “You need the full bead cabinet at home.” Not necessarily: counting real objects and simple homemade chains cover the core experience.

Questions parents ask