Tag Archives: Short Hills NJ

Understanding Montessori Math

by Arati Joshi, Early Childhood Head Teacher

“Children display a universal love of mathematics,
which is par excellence the science of precision, order, and intelligence.”
~ Maria Montessori

Dr. Maria Montessori, the founder of the Montessori Method of Education, believed that a child is born with a “mathematical mind”. From birth, children grow up surrounded by numbers and various mathematical concepts, such as classifying, comparing, sorting, ordering, and patterning. The Montessori approach recognizes this and builds upon the natural development by providing structured, hands-on activities that enhance early learning experiences.

Sensorial Exercises: Opening the Door to Mathematical Thinking
The Mathematics and Sensorial Areas of a Montessori Prepared Environment are deeply interconnected and complement each other. Sensorial materials prepare children to work in Math because of their innate sequence, order, and progression. For example, the Pink Tower, Brown Stair, Red Rods, and Knobbed Cylinders allow children to compare and order objects bases on size and dimension. The Sensorial materials indirectly empower children to physically manipulate objects and develop an intuitive sense of quantity and an understanding of the “base-ten” system. 

Red Rods

Numeration 1 to 10
The introduction of quantity and numeration from 1 to 10 begins when the child is introduced to concrete, hands-on materials such as the Red and Blue Number Rods, Sandpaper Numbers, and Spindle Box(es). As children get to hold the quantities in their hands and trace the numbers on Sandpaper Numbers, the definite concept is committed to memory. Through multi-sensory experiences, children build confidence in their ability to understand and work with numbers, setting the stage for further mathematical learning and exploration.

Decimal System
A strong understanding of numbers from 0 to 10 lays a solid foundation for learning place values of the Decimal System. Children learn that 0 can give a greater value to a number, and they also learn the names of different categories of the Decimal System (i.e., Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands). 

Through hands-on exploration and working with the Golden Bead Material and the Ten and Teen Boards, children gain a deep understanding of how the number system works, from units to thousands and beyond.

Group Operations
In Montessori Early Childhood classrooms, children typically begin their exploration of group operations after they have built a strong foundation in numeracy and place value. These operations include addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The Montessori Golden Bead Material provides the children a concrete representation and a strong conceptual understanding of arithmetic operations before transitioning them to more abstract representations. By emphasizing exploration, discovery, and manipulation, the Montessori group operation activities foster a love for learning and empower children from a young age to become confident and capable mathematicians.  

Bead Chains
The Short and Long Bead Chains used in Montessori classrooms introduce children to linear counting and skip counting. Children use these chains to practice skip counting by twos, threes, and so on, up to tens. This strengthens their number sense and prepares them for later activities in multiplication, squaring, and cubing.

Concrete to Abstract
Maria Montessori believed that “what the hand does, the mind remembers”. The Montessori Method recognizes that young children learn best when directly engaging with concrete material to make concepts real and easily internalized. Keeping that in mind, much of the Montessori curriculum is based on giving children exposure to concrete materials first, and then giving them incremental opportunities to work on more abstract concepts. As the child gains mastery over a material used, he or she is able to work independently.

A Lifelong Love for Math
The Montessori Method is renowned for its holistic approach to education and goes beyond teaching skills. This approach is particularly effective in the realm of mathematics, as it instills a lifelong love for the subject. By creating a positive and engaging experience through hands-on learning, children develop a deep appreciation for the beauty and relevance of mathematics that will stay with them throughout their lives!

Pennies for Peace 2015-2016

By: Camilla Nichols-Uhler, Hannah Ferris, and Alex Chiu

Since September, MCA students have been raising funds for Pennies for Peace, a “service learning program that brings cultural and philanthropic education to students and educators all over the world”.  Each campus recently totaled its pennies, with the help of our math-savvy students, and now plans to send the contributions on to assist children at schools throughout Asia.  Read on to learn how many pennies our MCA students counted, resulting in a significant contribution to this very worthy cause!
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Program Overview

Pennies for Peace is part of the educational component of the Central Asia Institute (CAI).  CAI is an international development organization that works with communities to improve access to education in Asia.  The CAI believes that education can alleviate poverty and reduce conflict.

Pennies for Peace is a fundraising program designed specifically for children, and its philosophy of “students helping students” is relatable even to preschoolers.  MCA students, whose capacities for compassion find their foundation in the Montessori Philosophy, have taken ownership of this yearlong project.  The children collected pennies from home and then brainstormed additional ways to engage the community to help them with their fundraising efforts.

Through their classroom Cultural studies, the children have learned a great deal about the state of education in certain areas of Asia.  And perhaps of more significance, they have also come to understand the importance of sharing some of what they have with others who are less fortunate.  When the MCA students discovered that just a few pennies could buy school supplies like notebooks and pencils for children in these far-away communities, they realized that many pennies could do even more.  They wondered if they could work toward collecting enough pennies to build an entire school.

Connecting Curriculum with a Cause

The Pennies for Peace program ties in nicely with the Montessori Culture and Science curriculum. Over the course of the year, MCA students have learned a lot about life in the more educationally deprived areas of Asia.  For example:

  • In many communities, the need for children to work on family farms often prevents them from going to school;
  • Often the physical terrain is very difficult to travel, and many children cannot get to schools in larger villages because roads through the Himalaya Mountain Range are dangerous;
  • Cultures place an emphasis on boys’ education at the expense of girls’ education. In some areas, only 12% of girls can read.
  • The culture in countries is very different from that in the United States: many families move from place to place based on the seasons to farm, they celebrate different holidays, and they eat different types of food.

In addition, participation in Pennies for Peace relates to the Montessori Peace curriculum, which aims to teach children how people working together peacefully can make the world a better place for everyone.  The Pennies for Peace program also taught the MCA students about organizing their efforts for a good cause.  They learned the process of brainstorming ideas, developing a plan for collections, and then putting that plan into action.  All of these efforts resulted in building their understanding that working together towards a common goal is hard work, but that it reaps wonderful results and is well worth it!

MCA Students and Families Take Initiative

At first, the children came to school with handfuls pennies that they found around their homes.  The sound of the pennies clinking as they were dropped into the collection jars was music to the children’s ears.  As the number of pennies in the jar grew, so did the enthusiasm and creativity of our students, leading some of our students and families to go beyond dropping their pocket change in the classroom penny jars.  We are extremely grateful to everyone for supporting this schoolwide project, and we wanted to recognize a few for their extra special effort:

  • One of our students took advantage of the warm autumn weather and sold lemonade to his neighbors. He accepted payment only in pennies and explained to his customers that the lemonade proceeds would benefit MCA’s Pennies for Peace  He collected thousands of pennies in one afternoon!

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  • Back in December, on an unseasonably sunny and warm Saturday, one family spearheaded a community fundraiser with the help of our friends at Café Beethoven in Chatham. Their children and friends from MCA created posters illustrating facts about the project and shared their knowledge about the countries they studied through the program with passersby.  Many kindly donated their coffee change after learning about the project.  This group of friends raised a total of $270 at the Saturday morning Café Beethoven fundraiser.

Cafe Beethoven

  • Recently, our MCA Elementary students sent a letter to the Short Hills Director, Mrs. Amy Hidalgo, and our Elementary Director/Senior Director, Mrs. Jeanine Christiana, pitching an idea for yet another Pennies for Peace In this letter, they asked permission to host a car wash before the end of the school year.  They explained in the letter:

E letter

Bragging Rights

The students at MCA are growing in their sense of responsibility as citizens of a global community through their involvement with the Pennies for Peace project.  As part of the Pennies for Peace philosophy, MCA students have helped spread the word about the project to other Montessori schools in the Tri-State Area, including sharing information about their participation with their pen pals at Brooklyn Heights Montessori School.  Our students recently found out that their friends at Brooklyn Heights are also in the process of totaling their pennies.  They realize that together they are making a difference!

Across our three campuses in Morristown, Chatham, and Short Hills, the MCA community has raised a grand total of $1,081.43 so far this year for Pennies for Peace.  That’s a lot of pennies… 108,143 to be exact!  Our Elementary students are currently working on a Math project to determine exactly how many school supplies this $1,081.43 can purchase for their friends on the other side of the globe.  Perhaps they will not build an entire school, but they are well on their way to building enormous positive changes in the lives of children in Asia who will benefit from their hard work this year.

We are incredibly proud of our students for sharing information about Pennies for Peace with their families, their Montessori counterparts at other schools, and their communities.  And we want to sincerely thank all of the parents, staff members, and community members from Chatham, Morristown, and Short Hills who contributed their pennies and their time to our various projects this year.

For more information about the Pennies for Peace program, please visit their website http://www.penniesforpeace.org.

 

 

 

 

References for this post:

“Pennies for Peace – a Free Service Learning Program.” Pennies for Peace. Central Asia Institute, Oct. 2015. Web. 10 May 2016.