Teen Boards (Seguin Board A)

Direct aim. To learn the names and numerals 11 to 19, each as one ten and some units.

Indirect aims, the ones you will not see at once

Two boards, each with five panels printed 10: nine panels in all, and one blank. Alison's lists each board at 19 by 4 inches.

Nine wooden cards marked 1 to 9, each the width of the zero, so a card slid in turns 10 into 11, 12 and so on.

Beads: nine golden ten bars and one colored bar for each of 1 to 9. Current sets sell the colored bars separately, as a teen bead box.

Montessori's 1917 bead bars are 2 green, 3 pink, 4 yellow, 5 light blue, 6 gray, 7 white, 8 lavender and 9 dark blue. Children soon read the bars by color.

Montessori's 1912 material was cards: square cards printed 10, and rectangular cards half that size with 1 to 9, laid over the zero. Her 1914 handbook calls them frames. The wooden boards sold today are the later form, and albums call them Seguin boards, for Édouard Séguin, whose methods she built on.

1. 1Lay out the beads: the ten bars in a row, and the colored bars 1 to 9 as a stair. Set the boards in front of the child, one above the other.Silent Set the beads out in a neat stair.
2. 2Put a ten bar on the table: "Ten." Lay the 1 bar beside it: "Ten and one make eleven."Say "Ten." Then "Ten and one make eleven."
3. 3Slide the 1 card over the zero of the first 10: "This says eleven." Point from the beads to the card.Say "This says eleven." Slide the card slowly so the zero disappears.
4. 4Carry on with twelve and thirteen, a ten bar and the matching colored bar beside each card.Say "Ten and two, twelve." One sentence for each teen.
5. 5Give the three-period lesson on two or three teens at a time.Say "Show me twelve." "What is this?"
6. 6On later days, go on to nineteen, then let the child build the board alone: card first, then beads.Say "Can you make fourteen?"

The zero disappearing under a card.

A ten bar and a colored bar side by side, matching the two digits.

Eleven and twelve, the two teens whose names hide the ten.

The finished boards, 11 to 19, each with its beads alongside.

The beads. Counting the colored bar beside a card checks the card, and every teen has exactly one ten bar. A card on the wrong 10 shows when the beads don't match.

Montessori’s name for this check is the control of error.

• Building a teen from the beads first, then finding its card
• Writing the teens on paper after building them
• Montessori's 1912 version with the number rods: rod 10 and rod 6 make 16, written 10 + 6 = 16
• The ten boards (Seguin board B): 10, 20, 30 up to 90, the same cards covering the zeros
• Counting the hundred chain, the next lesson here

Variations

This work needs only the material, so it has no printable of its own. The shelf plan below places it among the other works for the same age.

Free to print for your family, no email needed. Print at 100%, not “fit to page”, so the drawings keep their scale. Every printable on the site is listed on the printables page.

Ready for the first presentation

Ready for the next lesson

Unit beads and colored bars are small. Keep them in a dish on a tray when a toddler is around.

We have not bought the paid homeschool curricula, so they are not listed here.

1. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method (1912)

   Chapter XIX, Lessons on Decimals

   The material for decimals is square cards with the figure ten printed in large type and rectangular cards half the size bearing the numbers one to nine.

   Covering the zero of ten with the separate number cards forms 11 to 19, and the same numbers are composed by adding rods 1 to 9 to rod 10.

   The directress shows the card for 16 and the child places rod 6 after rod 10; each act is recorded, as 10 + 6 = 16.

   On a second long card the number cards are superimposed in numerical progression by tens.

2. Maria Montessori, Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook (1914)

   Arithmetic, Fig. 42

   Frames hold cards printed with 10 to 90 so that the figures 1 to 9 can be slipped in to cover the zero, and 10 covered by 1 becomes 11.

   Arithmetic

   The exercise with the cards marking the tens begins with the rods: rod 10, then rod 1 placed beside it as the figure 1 covers the zero, and so on up to 9.

3. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Elementary Material (1917)

   Part III, Numbers 1 to 10

   Bead bars for 1 to 10 have different colors: 9 dark blue, 8 lavender, 7 white, 6 gray, 5 light blue, 4 yellow, 3 pink, 2 green.

   Little by little the child stops counting the beads and recognizes the numbers by their color, the dark blue as 9 and the yellow as 4.

Lesson text and the scope and sequence are CC BY 4.0: reuse them with credit to Owen Wren, Homeschool Montessori, and a link. Photos and illustrations are all rights reserved. The plates from Montessori's 1912 and 1914 books are public domain and not ours. Terms.