The Beauty of Golden Beads
I love the Golden Bead material. I loved it in the classroom and I love it as a homeschooler. But even more importantly, the children love the Golden Bead material. In the classroom, 3-year-olds would watch the older students working with it and would practically drool in anticipation of being able to eventually be invited to do a lesson with it. Interestingly, not all teachers love Golden Beads.
Beads are spherical and therefore they roll. Exceptionally well it turns out! At the end of each week I would go around to the base of each of my shelves with my yardstick and do a quick swipe underneath to retrieve escaped beads.
Golden Beads take up a LOT of relative square footage, both when stored and when in use. It can be a pain to work around in a classroom and it is always a floor work simply due to logistics. And to supply enough material for an entire classroom is EXPENSIVE.
Any work with Golden Beads, simply because you are working with the decimal system, involves a strict series of steps that must be done in a specific order. This means that children typically stay in guided practice mode longer than with other materials to avoid building in wrong habits. This can be problematic in a classroom because of the student-teacher ratio.
And, to be honest, I have met many Primary teachers who simply don’t like math themselves, so they project that onto the environment and materials in the classroom. (If you hide your Bead work in the back corner of the room, it tends to get overlooked by students.)
Some of these classroom problems are easily dealt with in a homeschool setting. My grandson’s school table is just the right size for a mat and tray, so we do not have to fight dogs and siblings for floor space when working with the beads. Because I only need enough beads for one student at a time, I can contain my bank to a single 1’ x 2’ tray. I also only need two sets of wooden numbers. Ahhhh, but the rolling…
It is true there are other Base 10 sets out there. Everything from plastic or foam 3-D cubes to virtual digital apps – none of which roll. And they tend to be easier on the wallet. But in all honesty, they don’t generate the excitement that I see when children get to work with beads – extremely important in the Montessori world.
What should you look for when shopping for Golden Bead material?
1. Avoid glass beads. They are expensive and they chip.
2. Avoid any sets that use beads for 1’s and 10’s but wooden squares and cubes for 100’s and 1,000’s. How on earth does a four-year-old make a concrete connection that the square is actually 100 of the bead units if it is just a thin block of wood with circles painted on it?
3. Plan on needing 9 thousand cubes, 18 hundred squares, 45 ten rods, and 45 unit beads. You need more of the tens and ones for teaching numbers 20-100. Shop around – you can find each of these sold separately or in complete sets.
4. Some sets come as completely plastic molded, others strung on metal wires. I prefer the wired material – it doesn’t break as easily and is typically fixable. However, in a homeschool setting they will not take as much of a beating, so probably not as big of an issue. (I also find that the molded material is lighter weight and the contrast in weight between the hundred and thousand is not quite as impressive…)
5. Don’t forget two sets of wooden number tiles. (You can do paper/cardstock for cheaper – your choice.)
I also highly recommend investing in a decimal mat. In fact, if you don’t use one I would say you are doing yourself and your child a disservice. A good decimal mat can really make the difference between loving and hating the bead work. The best ones (sometimes the only ones) I have found have been on Etsy – availability and craftspeople vary, but there are usually different options to choose from. Sometimes you can even get pre-printed mats ready to be finished. (I don’t know why Montessori vendors have stopped carrying these?)
My final advice to you is that once you get the material, practice with it. Just you, no kids. I know you have a really long to-do list that gets longer as soon as they are all in bed, but view this as an investment. It is actually a fun material to work with, and if you enjoy using it you will enjoy teaching with it. And fun schoolwork is so much better than boring schoolwork…😊