Montessori-Bead-ChainsMontessori-Bead-Chains can be a powerful material to teach basic math to young children. Mathematics is something that is auto didactic. You can not make a child understand a certain aspect of Mathematics until he is ready. You can give him the right tools to make it easy for him and help him teach himself at his own pace, little by little. The colored bead chains are such hands-on materials that they may help children understand adding, subtracting, multiplication, division, linear skip-counting, even the concept of squares and cubes, all, at the child's own pace. Children need concrete materials to understand and grasp the concepts of Mathematics. In the Montessori classroom these bead chains are usually seen hanging in the Bead Cabinet.
At home you can do them with beads and pipe cleaners or beads and yarns. You may even involve your child in making them. Let's try one. Let's try the four-beads or the yellow bead chain.Making the Montessori-Bead-Chains with kids. 
Give some yellow beads, pipe cleaners cut already such that the length is just enough to hold four yellow beads plus allowance for twisting at the two sides. Show the child how to make the first four-bead bar. String four yellow beads in the pipe cleaner then twist the two ends to secure. Now to make a two yellow-bead-bar chain make another one and join the two pipe cleaners together at one end and twist the other ends to secure the beads in the bars. To make a three-yellow-bead-bar chain make three bead bars and join them at the ends. The child can make them as long as he wants. Note: For the yellow bead bar the magic number is four. There should be four beads always in one yellow bead bar. Another time introduce another color with the corresponding number of beads. After making the yellow-bead-bar-chain you may want to show him how to do skip counting. Make some labels with color co-ordinated yellow tags. After one bead bar place a tab. Count with the child. "How many beads? Yes four. Let's write 4 on the label." Count the next beads and place the second label. "yes, eight beads" Write the number 8 on the label. The child can now proceed on his own with a little help from you every now and then. At one point he may grasp the fundamental idea of multiplication and division just by playing over and over. Making the material himself and writing the numerals, he may have some sort of ownership which will be beneficial for him. Instead of pipe cleaners you may also use yarns with one end stiffened with glue and substitute colored macaroni for beads to keep the cost down. After Montessori-Bead-Chains you may go to the Home Page for more options.
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