Montessori Teens and Tens Extension Work

A few weeks ago, I shared some of the extension works that Vito was doing on the teens and the tens in my Instagram.  We didn’t own the complete set of Sequin Boards so I decided to make our own materials to be able to do more exercises and not be limited by the boards.  I have talked about learning about teens the Montessori way here and in this post.  In this post, I will give you a walk-through of how we learn more about the tens and how we practice counting bigger numbers (from 11 to 100).


We worked on a three lesson period on tens (10-100) using our Small Number Tablets and the decanomial beads last summer.  Now, this is an extension work which reinforces number recognition and counting practice for the child.  This activity also introduces the concept of place value (decimal system).

First round of work:  Match the number cards to the beads

The child’s goal is to “copy” the number beads set-up in the cards and correlate them with the number symbol.  The beads in the cards are the control of errors themselves.  The teacher/parent should initially guide the child in placing the exact beads, noting the number of tens and units, like in 23, there are 2 tens (golden beads) and 3 units (pink beads).  Emphasize that the “tens” digit in the number indicates the number of golden beads in the count.

Second round of work:  Match the beads to the cards.

Once the child is familiar with the counting of tens and how the golden beads are used to count bigger numbers, you can now move to the next stage where the beads are setup randomly without the cards.  Then let your child/student look for the number cards that matches the bead counts.  You can also check this old post of Mavi working on the tens.  I've setup the teens beads and he (Mavi) matched them to our homemade number cards.  In the picture below, Vito’s also working on the tens, I placed all the beads, he counted them and matched them to the cards.  He’s able to check his own work by checking/counting the image of the number beads in the number cards.


Alternatively, you can use these bead number puzzles for another set of work.  It has the same use of matching the number beads to the numeric symbol.  This set is perfect for those families/schools who don’t own the decanomial bead set.


Repetition is the key to mastering this topic so as much as possible I provide different ways of learning to give the child enough choices to explore and solve problems.  There are times when Vito likes working with the number cards alone and there are times where he enjoys working with the puzzles.



And finally, I mentioned last year that Vito enjoyed coloring and assembling booklets, thus I created activity sheets for our teens and tens learning pack so the child can color, trace, and assemble the materials his/her own.  We are using our favorite Lyra colored pencils here.  After this work, I assisted Vito in binding his booklet (see how we do it here)


All the printable materials that you saw in this post are available in this single learning pack:  Montessori Teens and Tens Extension Work.  Click the link or the image below for more details about this complete math learning material.