Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Banker's Game and Long Addition

The ubiquitous Banker's Game that uses the Montessori Golden Bead set to show children the mechanics of long addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

If you have not seen the Golden Bead material, the large cube below represents one thousand, the flat square represents one hundred, the bar has ten beads, and the unit is one. All of the material contains the actual number of beads, making it accessible and fascinating to young children learning math. The setup for the Banker's Game contains a lot of these bead materials!



A sample long addition problem might look like this: 2489 + 9750 = ? Your child would take the representative number of each thousands, hundreds, tens, and units, and then add them to get the sum. The process is very important because it helps create the link between concept and concrete.

Interested in Montessori math? Subscribe to our monthly Montessori curriculum newsletters on our site.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really enjoy your blog! Thank you!

Deb said...

I don't know how i came across this blog, but i am sure glad I did. I am starting up a daycare in my home and I wanted it to be something different than your average daycare. I wanted to be able to teach, love, and have fun with the kids I watch. I have a two year old son and at times I find him getting board and then getting into trouble, so I have been searching for ideas to keep his mind busy...then I came across you web page and thought "what a great way to teach these egar minds." I am excited to learn more about this way of learning. Keep Blogging. Oh do you know where I can buy some of the tools they use in Montessori schools?