Exercise 1
Material
- The 100 chain of 10 bars of ten, with envelope, in red if possible, containing green labels for the units 1-9, blue labels with the tens up to 100, then a red label for 100. These colors are meant to match those for learning the decimal notation used in earlier presentations and exercises, as well as the following presentations.**
- The 100 square.
Presentation
- Using the ‘100’ golden bead short chain and the square of 10.
- Show the child how the ‘short’ chain of ‘100’ when folded, makes the square of 10.
- To count it, unfold it again.
- Tell the child he is going to count this chain.
- He is to put the green numbered slip opposite each bead in the first bar.
- After that, although each bead is counted individually, only after every 10 beads is a blue marker put down. The ‘ten’ markers are blue, with 10, 20, 30, 40, etc., printed on them to mark the end of each ten.
Exercise 2
Material
- The 1000 chain of 100 bars of ten, with envelope, containing green labels for the units 1-9, blue labels with the tens, red labels with the hundreds only (110, 120, etc.) (220, 230, etc.) and the green label for 1000.
- The 1000 cube.
- Ten squares of 10.
Presentation
- The child is presented with the 1000 long chain. (note: this chain is very popular being the longest)
- Lay out the 1000 long chain in lengths of ten 10s (i.e. each bar of 10 placed by the next to form a square), ten squares of 10 are placed against one another, ten squares of 10 are formed. Show this by placing a ‘square of 10’ on top of each.
- Then, piling the separate squares of 10 together, make the ‘cube of 10’, and place the other cube beside it.
- Tell the child that now we are going to count the cube of 10, every single bead, and to do that we are going to lay out the long chain of 1000 very carefully.
- Before counting, the slips of this chain are laid out, face upwards, on another mat. As before, the first 10 beads are individually marked, and after that, every 10, with a red marker for every 100. Beside every bead marked 100, 200 and so on, a square of 10 is laid down,and the cube of 10 (= 1000 beads) is placed at the end.
Aim
- To consolidate the child’s knowledge of counting.
- To show strikingly the difference between the square and the cube of ten. Here the child has a sensorial impression which is given by the two chains placed in parallel in a straight line.
Age of great interest
About 5 years.
**There are some companies that sell the tens labels in golden color to match the bead color. This is not recommended here. Using a golden colored label might seem to make sense since the labels for the other chains match the color of the beads for the chains. As well, the color of the labels for the 9s is blue, and so there might seem to be potential confusion. However, at this point 1s, 10s, 100s, and 1000s are being used because the child is still learning the decimal system. Thus, using blue labels for 10s follows the need of the child to solidify the sense of the decimal system. Furthermore, the stamp game, used in the next few presentations, also uses blue for the 10s, and thus this keeps a consistency with this stage of learning. It is later, when the child is learning skip counting, that the child is using the other chains, along with the matching color labels, but then these chains are not used to solidify the decimal setup.