Materials
Bead bars from 1 to 9: 1-red, 2-green, 3-pink, 4-yellow, 5-pale blue, 6-lilac, 7-white, 8-brown, 9-dark blue. (The children should begin to recognise the numbers).
Direct aim
To recognize the number of beads in each bar. The child must get familiar with their colors.
Teacher’s presentation
Group (It is more interesting).
Exercise 1
- Give each child a few bars or a stair.
- “Let’s take the yellow one and count it: 1, 2, 3, 4. That’s four.”
- “Let’s take the dark blue -1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. That’s nine.”
- “Let’s arrange the bars in order.”
They start counting the bars from about 4 or 5 upwards.
Exercise 2
- The child works with the bars and becomes familiar with the numbers.
- He can work with them in various ways, e.g. taking a box of slips from 1 to 9. The child takes out the various slips and finds the corresponding bar.
A Guide For Bead Bar Exercises:
1) First presentation through use of colour. “Let’s count the yellow one-1,2,3,4″.
2) Could be used as a link between the number rods and the spindles.
3) Used when presenting the teens.
4) 3 stages of the snake game. The two checks. Negative snake =difference between.
5)The Commutative and Associative Law of Addition.
6) Isolation of Addition problems.
e.g. If a child is given 2 sets of bead bars, he can discover as long as he only adds 2 bars ata time. He would only use the golden bead bars when forming the answers.
7) The subtraction snake.
8) Isolation of Subtraction problems. (See No. 6).
9) The ‘difference between’ aspect of subtraction. e.g. if we add (2) to each side, the difference is still (5).
10) Multiplication tables.
11) Recurrence of zero when multiplying by 10 and 100.(x 30,40,500,600,etc.).
12) Difference between the multiplicand and the multiplier.
13) Commutative Law of Multiplication.
14) Exercise for finding factors. ‘How many 2s in 18?’
15) Group aspect of Division. ‘How many groups of 2 in 18?’
16) Preparation for the concept of area.
17) Indices.
18) The money snake.