This is true, Montessori children love Mathematics, it is incredible because we all know that Maths is one of the headache subjects for everyone both young and old. The good news is with Montessori, I have found the opposite to be the case.

I once had a child at Addlo Montessori School House, for privacy purposes let’s say her name was Bimpe, at that time she was in Nursery 1 and just 3 years and 7 months. Bimpe’s mum had bought some sweets, and given her and her brother one sweet each. Bimpe went back to her mum and asked if she could please have another sweet, but her mum informed her that the sweets were finished. Bimpe then asked,

“How many sweets did you buy Mummy?”

Her Mum answered, “I bought five sweets.”

Bimpe sighed and then asked her mum, “Mummy have you eaten any of the sweets you bought?”

“No I haven’t.”

“Then you should still have 3 sweets left. If you bought five and you gave one to me and one to Akin that makes only 2 sweets eaten. You had five sweets so there should be 3 sweets left.”

“Really Bimpe are you sure?” asked her mum in total shock. She really could not figure out how her daughter had quickly sorted out the answer in her head with such precision.

She did the right thing and apologised to her smart daughter and explained that she did not really want them eating too much sugar because it could eventually cause tooth problems, she promised her that they would have some more sweets in the next few days.

Mum did come to school however to find out if we had been doing subtraction in school. We had not actually started any work on that topic, we were still exploring simple word problems with additions. It was obvious that Bimpe had been able to extend her knowledge of solving simple addition word problems to figuring out the opposite manipulations as well.

The Montessori principle of working with children from hands-on concrete materials and experiences is why we are able to help the children understand and manipulate numbers with ease. Ensuring that children have a basic and fundamental understanding of quantities by counting one on one objects accurately is so crucial. The benefits are enormous!

We have found that children with this concrete hands on experience love Mathematics and can manipulate figures with ease and understanding. The Montessori maths materials are colour coded and inviting. Children are drawn to them and will always want to work with these colourful attractive manipulatives.

If you are interested in finding out how to help children love and understand maths using the Montessori way, then contact us at Addlo Montessori Training Center. At Addlo Montessori Training Centre we provide a fully loaded Mathematics Curriculum and online training for all to be Montessori School owners, teachers and parents. For more information about our training please visit our training page @ http://www.ayopejufalekulo.com/training.