DIY montessori maths beads

After seeing the colorful and interesting Montessori maths beads online, I got very inspired to DIY my own set. This Montessori method of using beads to represent quantities is a great way to teach young children maths, as they makes it interesting and more concrete.

I just finished my bead stairs and is using them to introduce the numbers 1 to 100 to both of my boys currently. There are many other ways to use them and the boys like to play with them a lot.

Materials needed:

 

Beads of course! In 10 different colors to represent the different numbers: RED, GREEN, PINK, YELLOW, BLUE, PURPLE, WHITE, BROWN, NAVY and GOLD. Traditional Montessori materials requires wooden beads, but I couldn't find them at a reasonable budget  thus I just improvised and opted for the cheaper plastic beads option. I purchased Darice plastic faceted 8mm beads. each pack have 480beads and I got 1 of each colors and 2 of the golden sun colors. Cost 42usd excluding shipping fee. I got them from consumer crafts.com or you can get them from amazon.

Next up is the beading wires, I got them from walmart craft section, a total 3 of them at 2.50usd each. cost: 8.20usd after tax.

 

And of course, the tools. A basic round nose plier and wirecutter will do.

 

Making the bead bars:

 

You need to make a eye loop using the round nose pliers and bead it accordingly, leave a small length for another loop and cut the wire. I kind of went into a factory mode by cutting all the wires for the particular length 30pcs in one go, thus the making process went quite fast. Its' really easy and my boys were nosy around when I was making them as they can't wait to get their little hands on them.

 

The beads I brought were more than enough and I had tons of the leftover beads which I turned them into mini bead bars set for my niece. I am planning to make more of the golden 10 bars to be able to introduce the value of up to 1 thousand for my 5 yr old.

 

 

And lastly, I went to get this organizer box for storage from Michaels, with a 50% coupon of course. Sadly there wasn't enough compartments thus I got to merge the 1s with 2s and 3s with 4s. Or you can pop by ROSS to get their make up organizer tray which have more compartments but I had this box already so I gave it a miss.

 



 

 

So in total I spent around 55usd and made a set of Montessori bead bars for my kids, a mini set for my niece and still have tons of leftover beads in the colors of 1 to 9.

 

 

In comparison to this amazon set pricing, with less than 20usd more I got a bigger set of Montessori math beads bars and many many 10 golden bead bars. What do you think? Is it worth the effort and pricing to diy or to just purchase the authentic set?

 

Thanks for stopping by:

XOXO

Ashley