Montessori Sunday: Spindle Boxes

It's been so long since I did a post on a specific Montessori Material that I had to go back and check what I haven't already posted about. So today's post is going to be about the Spindle Boxes because A) I haven't done them before and B) because I just recently showed them to a child in my class.

The spindle boxes are one of the earliest math materials children are exposed to in the classroom and are supposed to convey the idea that numbers mean a specific quantity of something. They are shown after the child has had practice counting the number rods (which are units that are bound together so that 5 is always 5 and you can't accidentally drop any parts to make is 4) and is comfortable identifying written numbers. The material is made up of a shallow box divided into 10 separate compartments. The numbers 0 to 9 are written in the space above each compartment. There is also a container with exactly 45 spindles in it.

The adult double checks that the child is familiar with the printed numbers and then begins demonstrating how to count out the desired number of spindles, beginning with 1. Each time the spindles are counted into the hand first and when the correct number is reached then the spindles are counted again in to the correct compartment. 

When the compartment for 9 is filled all the spindles will have been used, creating a built in control of error for the child. If they haven't counted correctly their will either not have enough spindles for the last box, or there may be some extras left over. 

Once all the spindles have been counted the teacher introduces the 0 compartment. "This is zero, zero is nothing so we don't put any spindles in here." The teacher then demonstrates how to bind the groups of spindles together and place them back in their compartments. This binding is done to show that the number is the whole quantity grouped together.

That's it. A fairly straightforward activity that introduces the child to the idea of 0, careful counting of objects, and double checking of work (by counting the spindles twice). I really miss the spindles from my training class, they were like old fashioned sewing spindles, smaller and smoother than the current type and just felt so much nicer in the hand. They were also smaller, I found that when showing my classroom set to C that he had trouble grasping the spindles in one hand as soon at the quantity was any higher than 7. This makes binding the spindles together even more difficult; how are you suppose to bind something that you can't even hold in one hand, what hand do you have to use then? So I'm currently brainstorming ideas on how to complete this part of the lesson. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Sometimes work really is just a lot of work

"276, 277, 278, 279....."
"What comes after 79?"
"70, 10?"
"Sort of. Do you remember what we call it when we have 7 tens and add 1 more 10?"
"80!"

This was my afternoon conversation with one of the older students in the class. He was counting one of the long bead chains which are the cubes of a number in physical form. Still with me? Yeah, I wasn't there the first time either, and we actually don't tell the children this fact until the elementary years. I'll put some more pictures at the bottom of the post if you're interested in just how they work.

But on with the story.

In the ideal world the boy counting the chain would have immediately started counting "281, 282, 283..." etc. etc. Instead this happened-

"280, 290, 300..." Hmm...doesn't sound quite right does it? Obviously he has the concept of the numbers 1 to 10, and knows that these numbers repeat, but he hasn't fully understood it yet. The head teacher and I were discussing the matter and think that one of the preparatory materials for this work was actually making it harder for him to count linearly. Oops.

Especially in the math area of the classroom, early activities lay the basis for later ones. In this case the child had done a lot of work with the thousand chain. This chain has a thousand beads on it, bound together in sections of 10. The children are supposed to count the beads, and place the correctly numbered arrow at the end of each section of 10. This student had quickly realized that all the arrows he needed to place ended in 0 and that he just needed to put the first number in order. A pretty good shortcut, and one we wanted him to figure out eventually but it's making it really hard for him to do the 9 chain as the sections now each have 9 beads in them instead of 10 and the pattern of arrows is much harder to recognize. This means that he now needs to actually count each individual bead, an exercise he skipped earlier when learning how to do the thousand chain.

Now an activity that was super simple for him, has suddenly become a lot more work. And not work in the Montessori sense of the word. In a Montessori environment the activities of the child are generally refereed to as work. This is because the job of the child is to build up themselves into the adult they will become. The term work is used as a sign of respect for what the child is doing and is not meant to seem as though we are submitting them to drudgery as a adult might think when we say the child is doing work. To the child work is purposeful and fulfilling; they enjoy it.

Unfortunately, nothing ever works flawlessly, and even with all the preparation materials in a Montessori classroom you run into stumbling blocks like this one. So I spent about half an hour gently coaching him on how to count linearly. Together we made it up to 250 and will tackle the chain again tomorrow. Hopefully the work will make the shift from drudgery to purposeful.

Some more explanation of the bead chains for anyone interested-

The chains come in two different types, short and long, and there is one of each type for the numbers 1 to 10.  Below is an example of the short 5 chain-

The short chain shows the number squared. So since this is the 5 chain there are 25 beads total, separated into sets of 5. The square in the upper right is bound together and helps to subtly introduce the idea that this chain is the square of a number. The long chains on the other hand show the cube of a number (125 in the case of the 5 chain) and instead of a square the end of the chain is symbolized by a cube, such as in the photo below.

So yeah, there's a lot going on in these chains. However, when the children take them out in the environment they are simply counting the beads and placing the arrow with the correct number next to it. The idea of squares and cubes are supposed to be passively absorbed and pulled out again later when the child is introduced to this concepts in their elementary years.

Montessori Monday

So I did want this blog to be not just about my doings in Hong Kong, but also to add some Montessori philosophy into it. I'm also hoping it will help me learn how to explain the Method in a concise way that people who know nothing about it can understand. So I'm going to try to every Monday have a post about a different Montessori material and how it plays an important part in the curriculum.

Maria Montessori with children

But since today is the first post let's do a quick overview of the Montessori curriculum. Maria Montessori began the first Montessori class in 1907 in the slums of Italy. The owners of a building for low income families initially hired her to keep the children who were not old enough for school occupied while their parents were at work so they did not damage the building. Dr. Montessori began this school with only a few materials originally designed for children with special needs, and some practical activities such as hand washing and sweeping. The children in this setting flourished and their behavior so impressed visitors that new schools following the same method were opened and the scenario repeated with children from different backgrounds. Over the years Maria Montessori developed materials for teaching reading, writing and math due to the prompting of parents. She found that not only could children do these higher level academics when given the right materials, but that they enjoyed mastering them as well. As the years progresses Dr. Montessori expanded her teachings to children of school age, and then for children from birth to three.

100 years later the Montessori method is still in use and succeeding with children around the globe. Some schools follow the philosophy as laid out while others have adopted new ideas as the years have progressed. The Association Montessori Internationale is the body which helps monitor schools for their adherence to the original Montessori method. Unfortunately the term 'Montessori' is in the public domain and many schools which claim to follow the philosophy do not. Today many research studies about child development are finding that the ideas developed by Dr. Montessori in the 1900's have a scientific base.

In the children's house, which covers children from 3 to 6 years of age, there are four main areas of the classroom: practical life, sensorial, language and math. Practical life encompasses those simple, everyday activities that we do to maintain and beautify our environment and selves. Activities like buttoning, dusting, caring for plants or preparing food may all be part of the practical life curriculum. The sensorial materials are specifically designed to isolate one quality of the world such as color, smell or weight, and give it a physical form. These materials are not designed to teach the children that objects have different properties (such as roughness or smoothness) but to help them classify and name these qualities. The area of language in Montessori covers both oral and written language (which is both writing and reading). Much of the language material is given after the child has had experience in practical life and sensorial as these activities indirectly prepare the child for writing and reading. The math materials are designed to give children physical objects that they can manipulate when working with numbers. Montessori found that even very young children could do arithmetic with numbers into the thousands if given the right material.

Beyond the materials the Montessori classroom emphasizes the building of community. Children are given a chance to practices the lessons of grace and courtesy, which include things such as blowing your nose, and greeting visitors. The children are encouraged to collaborate and help one another, a system that is greatly enhanced by the mix of ages in the classroom. The youngest students are shown the culture of the classroom by the older ones, and in turn help them practice leadership skills. Montessori focuses on the whole of the child's development, not simply the academic skills.