Sunday, 11 November 2012

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Montessori Activity: Introduction to Decimal Quantity - Beads




AGE: 4 - 4.5 years old (after mastery of Counters and Cards)

OBJECTIVE(S):
1. To provide a sensorial experience in explaining the differences between one and thousand in terms of size and weight, thereby making concrete the concept of decimal quantity.

2. In the process to familiarize the child with the names of the different categories.

3. To acquaint the child with the written symbols for the decimal quantity.

MATERIALS:

1.     1 tray containing 1 unit golden bead, 1 golden ten-bar (10), 1 golden hundred-square (100) and 1 golden thousand-cube (1000)

2.     1 mat

PRESENTATION:

1.     Name the Decimal Demonstration Tray and show there they are kept.

2.     Take the unit, feel it, and bring the child’s attention to the size, say: “This is very small.”

3.     Encourage the child to feel and explore it.

4.     Tell the child: “This is one unit”.

5.     Have the child walk one round with a unit bead in his hand with great care and encourage the child to repeat its name.

6.     Take the ten-bar, feel it and say: “This one feels different from the unit.”

7.     Encourage your child to feel and experience it.

8.     Place it vertically to the left of the unit and say: “It is made of units. Let’s count how many.”

9.     Count with the child the number of units in the ten-bar.

10.  Tell the child: “This is called ten.”

11.  Have the child walk one round with a ten-bar in his hand and encourage the child to name it ten.

12.  Take the hundred-square, feel it and bring the child’s attention to the size, say: “This one feels bigger than the ten-bar.”

13.  Encourage the child to feel and experience it and place it to the left of the ten-bar, say: “In this one, we have many tens. Let’s count how many tens we have.”

14.  Count with the child the number of ten-bars in the hundred-square: “1 ten, 2 tens, 3 tens, 4 tens…. 10 tens.”

15.  Tell the child: “We call 10 tens - hundred. There are ten tens in one hundred.”

16.  Have the child walk one round with a hundred-square in his hand and encourage the child to name it hundred.

17.  Take the thousand-cube, feel it and bring the child’s attention to the size, say: “This one is very big and heavy.” Bring the child’s attention to how many hundreds we have in the thousand-cube.

18.  Encourage the child to feel and experience it and place it to the left of hundred-square.

19.  Count with the child: “1 hundred, 2 hundreds, 3 hundreds… 10 hundreds”.

20.  Tell the child: “We call 10 hundreds – thousand. There are ten hundreds in one thousand.”

21.  Have the child walk one round with a thousand-cube in his hand and encourage the child to name it thousand.

22.  Do the Three Period Lessons by naming: “unit, ten, hundred and thousand” pointing respectively to the objects.

23.  Say, “Show me 100,” or “Show me unit,” or “Show me thousand”.

24.  Repeat until the child has a good grasp of the names of all four.

25.  Then point to the unit and ask: “What is this?” and the child should say unit for example.

26.  End by having the child walk one round carrying very carefully the demonstration tray with the materials.

VIDEO DEMONSTRATION:


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
J (3Y8M6D) tried this today. He found it most fun to walk one round with each of the decimal quantity. I tried to do it in English, but could feel that he learns better and pays more attention if I use Chinese. So I repeated the whole lesson to him in Chinese. It is not easy doing bilingual Montessori.

I think he is still grasping the concept of hundred and thousand, but it gives him some kind of idea. So I will repeat this in another way in our daily life if possible.

REFERENCES:

11.11.2012 - Joshua happily doing the "quiet walk" around with the thousand cube

C tried it on 12 November 2019 (3Y5M26D) for the first time. She enjoyed it, walking one round with the beads. But she didn't want to repeat it, and also to move on to the Montessori Memory Game tray on the shelf, which was distracting her.... aarrgghhh But she enjoyed it very much, and I think she was learning what quantity is all about, how one differs from thousand, how thousand is much heavier than one, and what they are called in Chinese. Similar to J, I did this activity with C in Mandarin.

  






I bought our demonstration tray from Kidadvance.com, but it is also available from Amazon:


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