Tens Boards (Seguin Board B)

Direct aim. To learn the names and numerals of the tens, 10 to 90, and then every number from 11 to 99.

Indirect aims, the ones you will not see at once

Two boards with nine panels in all, printed 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90. Alison's lists each at 19 by 4 inches; Nienhuis splits them 10 to 50 and 60 to 90.

Nine cards marked 1 to 9, the width of a zero, that slide in to cover it.

Golden ten bars and golden unit beads. Forty-five ten bars count out every ten at once; nine are enough if you count along one decade at a time.

Montessori's 1914 handbook describes frames holding cards printed 10 to 90, with the figures 1 to 9 slipped over the zero. Her 1912 book does the same on a long card, the numbers set out by tens.

A table or rug with room for the boards and a row of bead bars beside them.

1. 1Set the boards in front of the child, one above the other, 10 at the top.Silent Square the two boards so the panels line up.
2. 2Lay one ten bar beside the 10: "Ten." Lay two beside the 20: "Two tens, twenty."Say "Ten." Then "Two tens. Twenty."
3. 3Carry on to ninety, a new row of bars at each panel, saying each name.Say "Three tens, thirty." One sentence per panel.
4. 4Give the three-period lesson on two or three of the tens at a time, especially the irregular ones: twenty, thirty, fifty.Say "Show me fifty." "What is this?"
5. 5On another day, build 11 again with a ten bar and one unit bead, and slide the 1 card over the zero.Say "Ten and one, eleven." Slide the card slowly so the zero disappears.
6. 6Add one unit bead and change the card to 2: twelve. Carry on to 19.Say "Twelve." Change the card as the bead goes down.
7. 7At 19, add one more unit. Exchange the ten units for a ten bar and move down to the 20 panel: twenty.Say "Ten units make a ten." Then the exchange, in silence.
8. 8Carry on through the boards, as far as the child's interest goes, and leave the boards out for counting alone.Say "Can you keep counting?"

Nine tens lined up beside ninety: the most bars the child has handled.

The exchange at 19: ten loose units turning into one more ten bar.

Twenty-nine becoming thirty under one card change.

A two-digit number whose beads lie right beside it.

The beads. The bars beside a panel count its tens, and the units count the card. A card that doesn't match the beads shows the mistake. The order of the panels also checks the counting.

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

• Counting from 1 to 100 along the boards with beads, exchanging at every ten
• Building a number from the beads and finding its card: 4 tens and 7 units is 47
• Building a number from the card and fetching its beads
• The hundred board, where the same numbers sit in rows of ten
• Skip counting by ten from any number: 3, 13, 23, 33

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

Loose unit beads are choking-size. Keep them in a cup and the work off the floor with a toddler about.

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

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

   Arithmetic, Fig. 42

   Frames hold cards printed with the numbers 10 to 90, and the figures 1 to 9 can be slipped in to cover the zero, passing from ten to ten.

   Arithmetic

   Taking pieces as long as rod 10 instead of the piece 1, we could count 10, 20, 30 up to 90, and two rods of 10 are needed to make 20.

   The children show much enthusiasm for these exercises, which demand two sets of activities from them.

2. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method (1912)

   Chapter XIX, Lessons on Decimals

   On card B the rectangular number cards are superimposed in numerical progression by tens.

   Almost all the children count to 100, a number given to them in response to the curiosity they showed in learning it.

   To distinguish the higher 1 from the first, a zero, a sign that means nothing, is put near it to make 10, and covering the zero with the number cards forms 11 to 19.

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

   Part III, Arithmetic

   Children choose the ten-bead bars to count the tens in succession, 10, 20, 30, 40, and put together ten-bead bars to match small cards on which 10, 20 and so on are written.

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.