If you are using a Montessori curriculum in your homeschooling, or if you are a teacher that is new to this level of the Montessori math curriculum, you may be wondering when the best time to introduce the materials that work on memorizing multiplication facts. The Montessori math curriculum for primary and early elementary students begins working on the concept of multiplication after students have become familiar with the concept of addition. Multiplication is typically taught before subtraction because multiplication is an extension of addition. Before students work on learning times tables, or multiplication facts, students use the Golden Bead Materials to understand the concept of multiplication. Additionally, students should also be working on the Short Chain Material that teaches cardinal counting, skip counting, and introduces the concept of squaring. Skip counting helps with the memorization of multiplication facts tremendously. Once students are familiar with using the Golden Beads for static multiplication, or multiplication that does not involve carrying, students can begin to work with the materials that support the memorization of multiplication facts. These materials in order of introduction are:
- Multiplication with Bead Bars
- The Multiplication Board
- Multiplication Charts
- Full Control Chart
- Full Finger Chart
- Half Finger Chart (contains essential tables)
- Blank Finger Chart with box of tiles containing all of the possible products
The first multiplication fact material, or multiplication of bead bars, is the most concrete of the set. We explain multiplication by saying that the multiplicand (first number) is the number bead bar we want to get, and the multiplier (second number) is how many times we want to get it out. After we set up the bead bars, we either count each bead or skip count using each bead bar to come up with the product or answer to the problem. So 5 X 4 would look like this:
We would say that we got out the 5 bar 4 times and the answer or product is 20.
I personally like to start with the 5x facts first, and then move to the 10x facts, then the 2x facts and move straight through each number through the 9x facts. I save the 1x facts for last, as these seem to confuse students with addition more than the others. Other teachers prefer to start with the 3x facts, still others start with the 1x facts and move up in order. I start with the 5x facts because I have found that the students are typically able to skip count easily by fives by the time they are ready to work of multiplication fact memorization.
If you are wondering if the Multiplication with Bead Bars material is worth purchasing for your home school student, I would say that it is absolutely worth it. If you have younger students also at home, this versatile material can be used to create earlier materials like the Short Bead Stair, Teens Boards, Tens Boards, and early Snake Games. You could get creative and use the bead bars to create make-shift Short (Square) Chains, which would be perfectly acceptable in a home school situation. Some teachers like using the colored bead materials for addition fact memorization as well. As students move through the elementary math materials, they will use these bead bars again for the Checkerboard Material which works on more advanced problems incorporating place value and multi digit multipliers. In short, unlike other materials that your child may only use once or twice, this material has a myriad of uses throughout many years of your child's education and is definitely worth the investment. However, if you are temporarily homeschooling, or if you are an educator that is facilitating distance learning, there are low cost digital option available. I have created Multiplication with Bead Bars Boom Cards that are available here.
