Printed Arrows: 100/1000 Bead Chains

Printed Arrows: 100/1000 Bead Chains are the number labels that turn a long bead chain into a readable number line on the floor. The chain is stretched out straight first, because the thousand chain is far too long for any table, and the child then counts bead by bead and sets an arrow at each named point. Working this way makes skip counting and the square and cube of ten visible instead of abstract, and the last arrow of a chain says plainly where it ends. The labels belong with the bead material of the mathematics area and are used from age three, long before the same counting turns into written multiplication.