Montessori Teens and Tens

Monday 20 January 2014

We've done a lot of Montessori-Inspired Math activities before and this is my first attempt to apply Montessori method in our lesson at home using KHT Montessori Math Album.

Last year, I purchased a few Montessori materials and one of which was the Decanomial beads which despite its price was worth it.

I started the lesson with the "teens" first. I am using my homemade large number cards. I followed the procedure in the KHT Math album and after the presentation and 3 lesson period, I asked Mavi questions like"

10 and 9 makes?
10 and 2 is?
To make 18, you need?

Of course, he has to answer these questions. If not, I would go back to the cards and beads, and show to him the answer and why. I find this lesson very effective as it is a hands on activity and visual. Children would immediately associate the number symbol to the quantity it represents. This is also a good start of showing the difference between units of tens and ones.

The second time we did this, I asked Mavi to do all the presentation by himself of which he obliged happily.

Then we moved to the "tens" lesson. Same procedure of presentation and same flow of asking questions like "How many tens are there in 70?" Again, this is a perfect way of associating number symbols to the quantity.

Then our little game began. I formed 10 random numbers using the cards, and Mavi has to give me the correct quantity using the beads. This was something that he really really like doing :) We'll be having more exercises on this.

For advance exercise I plan to do the said activity on the other way around, that is present him the quantity using the beads and he has to give me the correct number using the cards.... hmmm that sounds challenging! We might try it later :)

And we also did a little "100 - 1000 Bead Chain" activity. Will give you an update on this soon! As of now he just finishes up to 590, but I'm happy that he now gets the pattern of counting from 100-500.