Santia walked confidently toward the math area. But then she paused, as if remembering something. She turned around and walked quickly to where the floor mats are stored: rolled-up mats, roughly 50 by 90 centimeters each, standing in a cylindrical rattan basket.
She carried a floor mat with both hands, set it down on the floor, and unrolled it.
The children already understand that when they want to work on the floor, they need to use a floor mat as their workspace.
When I first saw Montessori students working on the floor on these small mats, I didn’t think it mattered much. I even thought it was a bit of a hassle for the children.
But Montessori discovered that the floor mat gives children an awareness of their own work area. It naturally helps them understand their responsibility for the materials they’re using.
It also makes it easier for us, as adults, to teach them to respect their friends’ workspaces.
I watched Santia stand up and head back to the math area, approaching the shelf where the bank game materials are kept.
There sits a container holding 9 thousand-cubes, each one made of a thousand beads strung together to form a cube. Next to those are 45 hundred-squares, each made of a hundred beads. The container also holds 45 ten-bars, each made of ten beads, and a small box with 45 individual unit beads.
All the beads are golden. In our Montessori classroom, we call them golden beads.
She asked me to help her carry the materials over to her floor mat.
Ever since I introduced her to the bank game two weeks ago, Santia has worked with it almost every day, usually alongside two friends.
Today she was on her own. The friends she usually works with were still happily drawing and pasting in the art area.
Santia asked me to write her an addition problem with thousands so she could work it out using the bank game.
This is what Montessori called the bank game.
Santia had been choosing it almost every day since her guide introduced it two weeks ago.
Santia looked at the problem I’d written: 3,452 + 2,321. She began gathering beads for 3,452.
She reached for a tray, then moved to collect 3 thousand-cubes, 4 hundred-squares, 5 ten-bars, and 2 unit beads.
She showed me everything she’d gathered. I counted through them and smiled back at her, all correct.
Santia transferred the beads onto a cloth mat with columns for thousands, hundreds, tens, and units, placing each group in its proper column.
Then she went on to gather beads for 2,321, following the same steps. She brought them to me so I could confirm she’d collected them correctly.
I examined each group carefully and counted them. Santia watched closely, then smiled with relief when she saw me nod.
Then she began adding the two numbers together. Starting with the units column, she combined all the unit beads and counted them, then wrote down the number.
She did the same for the tens, then the hundreds, then the thousands. She wrote down each result.
Beaming, she looked up at me and read the final answer with confidence. She laughed with delight when I told her she was exactly right.
She did this again and again. For more than 30 minutes Santia worked joyfully, laughing, jumping up now and then. Her small body didn’t slow her down one bit as she moved nimbly between the shelf and her mat, collecting beads, arranging them, and returning them to their container.
I never would have imagined that a five-year-old could be this joyful about math. And I didn’t have to push her or scold her even once.
I laughed along with her, sharing in the delight that was written all over her face.
“The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.” -Maria Montessori
