Finally splurged last week and purchased the bead cabinet. I forgot to buy the arrows so now I’m busy making them. This required some research into what’s included and it’s actually quite confusing. So I thought I’ll write it down here for reference.
The bead cabinet contains the following.
- Short Bead chains has square chains. So 1, 2/2, 3/3/3, 4/4/4/4, etc. The golden Bead Chain of 100 is also sold separately.
- Bead squares are square representations of the short bead chains #1-#10. #10 is basically hundred square.
- Long bead chains has are cube chains. So 1, 2/2/2/2, 3/3/3/3/3/3/3/3/3, etc. The golden Bead Chain of 1000 is also sold separately.
- Bead cubes are cube representations of the long bead chains #1-#10. #10 is basically thousand cube.
The reason I got confused was that I wanted to make the arrows myself. I couldn’t bring myself to spent $45 (including shipping) to buy the cheapest set from Kid Advance. But in doing research, I found that most free printables don’t do it up to the standards of Nuinhuis. The arrows have different widths to help the child. The Nienhuis and Allison’s Montessori ones have cursive numerals printed.
In the Nienhuis catalog description it says:
- 1/4″ for units
- 1/2″ for multiples
- 3/4″ for squares
- 1″ wide for cubes
What are multiples??? Since I haven’t actually used the material, I had no idea. Good thing Montessori Materials actually has printables. I wish people make their numbers in cursive. It’s very important to me because Astroboy constantly tells me that is not how 4 is written when I show it to him the cursive way. It’s the little details like this that makes Nienhuis so expensive.
Combined with repeated staring of catalog pics, here is what I made:
Short Bead Chains #1-#9
Montessori Materials’ PDF file is a better reference. But basically for each chain, you have arrows completely in that color. You use:
- 1/2″ for each “multiple” of that number that is NOT the square. For bead chain of 3, it’s 3, 6. For bead chain of 7 it’s 7,14,21,28,35,42
- 3/4″ for the square. Use this size for bead chain of 1. For bead chain of 3 it’s 9. For bead chain of 7 it’s 49.
For example, for bead chain of 4 (total 16) you have:
- 1/2″: 4, 8, 12
- 3/4″: 16
Long Bead Chains #1-#9
Montessori Materials’ PDF file is a better reference. But basically for each chain, you have arrows completely in that color. You repeat what you made in Short Bead Chains and continue on. You use:
- 1/4″ for first set of numbers ONLY. For bead chain of 3, it’s 1,2,3. For bead chain of 7, it’s 1,2,3,4,5,6,7.
- 1/2″ for each “multiple” of that number that is NOT the square of the number. For bead chain of 3, it’s 3, 6. For bead chain of 7 it’s 7,14,21,28,35,42
- 3/4″ for the square. Use this size for bead chain of 1. For bead chain of 3 it’s 9. For bead chain of 7 it’s 49.
- 1″ for the cube. This is the last number typically.
For example, for bead chain of 2 (total 8) you have:
- 1/4″: 1, 2,
- 1/2″: 6
- 3/4″: 4
- 1″: 8
Golden bead chain of 100/Short Bead chain #10 (10/10/10/10)
- 1/4″ – #1-#9 in green
- 1/2″ – #10-#90 in blue
- 3/4″ – #100 in red
stored in the smaller/narrower plastic container
Golden bead chain of 1000
- 1/4″ – #1-#9 in green
- 1/2″ – #10, #20, #30…#90, #110, #120…#190, #210, etc in blue
- 3/4″ – #100, #200, #300…#900 in red
- 1″ – #1000 in geren
I really should buy the two different size boxes available from Montessori Services for storage. But I spent so much last semester on plastic boxes we haven’t used I’m just making do for now.
