Do we all have a ‘Mathematical Mind’?

by Tricia Siudut, Teacher of the Traditional Primary Classroom

          Maria Montessori believed that all people have a “mathematical mind.” When I first learned this I thought, “Well here I am to prove her wrong!” But as I learned more about her view that mathematics are everywhere, I realized that my initial attitude of disbelief was a product of my traditional math education. Montessori saw and designed her materials around the fact that math is all around us; in the proportions of buildings, the angles of light and shadows, in the patterns in nature, and in our desire to get the same amount of pizza as our friends. She saw that by drawing attention to places where math exists in our everyday lives we make it relevant and interesting for children.

During the past few weeks’ math has been very alive in our classroom, especially with the 4.5-5 year olds who are working with the “Golden Beads.” Every morning the children are eagerly taking these materials out and practicing adding with 4 digit numbers. Many of the younger children who have not yet had this lesson are interested and some of them have spent time observing their peers. There are a lot of moving parts and the social, game-like way that the work is done makes it intriguing. This activity, sometimes called the “Bank Game,” is their introduction to the decimal system and the way that each of the four math operations are first experienced.

I have been hearing exclamations like, “I love addition!” and confident statements like, “a thousand has three zeroes,” and “ten hundreds are equal to one thousand.” It has been wonderful to see such enthusiasm for a subject that came across in my traditional elementary school as far less exciting, since I learned while stationary at my assigned desk through worksheets and rote memorization.

What has struck me is that when the children are allowed to work together while moving around the classroom they are happy. When given physical representation for quantity that they can feel and see and manipulate, something clicks for them. They can count the objects that we are adding together and have a sensorial experience of the change that takes place in the quantity depending on what operation we engage in. The repetition of hearing their peers count their beads and call them over and over again by the category names of units, tens, hundreds, and thousands helps them to remember the names as well as the column that the number symbol belongs in. The logic of the activity appeals to them, and fills them with joy!