Montessori Math for Toddlers: Sandpaper Numerals

Sandpaper Numerals, Spindle Boxes, Red Rods, and Red and Blue Rods are all designed to give young children hands-on exposure to counting, quantities, and relative sizes of numbers.

The Sandpaper Numerals are designed to be traced in the direction they are written. Your child uses his or her pointer and index fingers to lightly explore the configuration of each numeral.

Here are the Sandpaper Numerals.

You will see that the set includes 0 through 9 (as do the Spindle Boxes). The concept of ten and teens will be introduced in the next stage.

You can use cardstock, fine-grained sandpaper, and stencils to create DIY Sandpaper Numerals (or you can usually find a good used set online).


Photo credit
Nienhuis