Bead Chain – Montessori

The bead chains are a colorful, quintessential Montessori material. In the primary classroom, children use them to learn how to count, and perhaps how to skip count. In a lower elementary classroom, they are used for skip counting and to help memorize multiplication facts. The Bead Cabinet is the stuff of magic.

When a student first walks into the Montessori classroom, takes a deep breath and surveys the room, they are instantly drawn towards the beauty, simplicity and elegance of this seemingly magical material called the bead cabinet.

Short and Long chains for each number 1 through 9.

• Sets of labels that correspond in color to the chains.
• Squares that correspond to those presented by the chains.
• One cube for each set of short and long chains.
Montessori bead chain often carries our students into the hallway, which is a large enough space to accommodate the activity, we wonder where else it will lead them.
Purpose:

There are multiple purposes to the activity. Or, as Montessori relays, both direct and indirect aims. One of the primary ambitions of the exercise is to offer children further experience as they learn how to count.
This material illustrates the squares and cubes of numbers from 1 to 10. The chains sitting on the shelves illustrate the squares of numbers while the hanging chains illustrate the cubes of numbers.

The top shelf of the cabinet holds boxes that contain colour coordinated numbered arrows for the squares (short boxes) and cubes (tall boxes) of numbers. The child must be familiar with numbers 1 to 100 for the short chains and 1 to 1000 for the long chains.

This material is used for many different purposes in the Montessori casa (preschool) classroom and in the lower elementary classroom. Children often begin work with this material at the age of 4.

The bead chains are a very popular activity in our classrooms. They are a visually stunning piece of material that requires both manual dexterity and persistence.