Montessori Math

Montessori Math and the materials can be confusing at first glance but it's an easy and tactile way for students to understand math.

Students learn the decimal system by first gaining a firm understanding of quantity. This is done by presenting a variety of work, including beads and cubes, to represent units. Students also learn to name individual categories, such as units, tens, hundreds, and thousands. In the first picture the teacher is doing a collective exercise in addition. The collective exercises (using the Golden Beads on the mat) give the child the sensorial impression of addition, multiplication, subtraction and division, and visually makes clear the relationships between the operations.
 
In the second picture, the student is using the division rack and tubes to perform long division. The long division material forms the bridge to abstraction for the decimal system exercises of division. The set consists of 4 color-coded division boards and a wooden tray that holds the 7 racks of tubes with beads, 7 cups and 36 "skittles."