Bead Material: Individual Beads Nylon

Bead Material in nylon covers the whole work with the decimal system, with beads strung one by one. The child carries a unit, a ten bar, a hundred square and a thousand cube, compares them in the hand and exchanges ten smaller units for one larger, so place value is grasped long before it is written down. Because every bead stays visible on its thread, a child can count along a bar and confirm that ten of them make the next category rather than taking it on trust. The same beads carry on into addition and multiplication later, which is why the material is bought once and used for years. This is a full fit-out for a 3 to 6 group rather than a single shelf activity.