The children in a Montessori Casa community are introduced to the concept of making ten through a combination of coloured bead bars. In preliminary activities, the strings of coloured beads are associated with numbers from 1 to 9. 1 is 1 red bead, 2 is 2 green beads, 3 is pink, 4 is yellow, 5 is turquoise, 6 is purple, 7 is white, 8 is brown, 9 is navy blue. The children work on colouring sheets showing a colourful snake as well as a golden snake, learning the properties of the coloured bead bars.
In the Snake Game, the child is shown how to combine the coloured beads, linking them together to form what looks like a snake. Then they count along the beads, and every time they count to ten, they must replace the counted beads with a golden ten bead bar. Eventually, the coloured snake will turn into a golden one!
Once the child has mastered the snake game, they place the bead bars in the patterns shown on various control cards, making a variety of combinations of equations that they can later print out.
