Montessori Short Bead Chains and Squares

Kaylee using the Montessori short bead chains and squares

The short bead chains are the number bead bars connected together. They are mainly used for skip counting and they make a square of a number. In the picture, Kaylee is using the short chain of 3. She stretches out the chain and then puts the number arrow at that number of beads. Then, she puts the matching bead square at the end.

The short chain of 3. 

She counts 3-6-9. When you fold up the short bead chain it matches the bead square. It is 3 sets of 3 which is the same as 3x3 or 3 squared. 

All of the short bead chains and squares completed.

The next step is to make a bead chain chart. There is a great explanation, labels, and free chart HERE. 

Beginning to make a bead chain chart.

The chart will help Kaylee to eventually remember the square chains from memory. 

The square chains chart all completed. 

Montessori Golden Bead Chain of 1,000

In the spring, we began using the Montessori golden bead chain of 1,000. It is a long chain with 100 bars of 10. It is to become familiar with counting to 1,000. In this session, we used the number arrows to mark each set of 10.

We grouped the 1,000 chain in to groups of 100 and compared it to the 100 square and the 1,000 cube. 

Then, we spread the 1,000 chain across the living room and began labeling each group of 10 with the correct number. 

It was a very long chain!

We have to keep our number arrows and golden bead chain organized. 

We have each section labeled so the number arrows are easy to find. 

We use this organizer. It works perfectly. 

Nature Club: Wilderness Survival

The latest Homeschool Nature Club meeting that we attended has been about wilderness survival. They discussed basic wilderness and safety survival tips.

Discussing wilderness safety and survival tips.

 Next, they split in to groups and made shelters.

Testing the shelter.

For the last activity, they made an emergency kit out of a Altoids tin. 

Making an emergency kit out of Altoids tins.

Kaylee's new emergency kit.

Her kit contains: Bandaids, a whistle/compass, matches, a fire starter (cottonballs rubbed in Vaseline), and a garbage bag (not shown.)

They also made emergency sunglasses. They used duct tape and string. They put two pieces of duct tape together (sticky sides together), then cut holes for eyes and the string. 

Cutting out the eye holes in her duct tape sunglasses.

Emergency sunglasses all finished.