Montessori School Fullerton, Orange County, CA 92833

Math is an extension of the need to communicate and should be introduced early in the child’s education. Children have experience of math even before they walk into the Montessori primary classroom. When a child breaks up a cookie or candy bar to share he is actually doing fractions. Children are fascinated with numbers at an early age. The only reason a child picks up language quicker is that he is given more exposure to it; he is not given the same exposure to math. In the Arborland Montessori class we do not fall into this trap of making math an obstacle that has to be overcome at some future date. Some mathematicians believe that the abstractions necessary for acquiring language are in fact more difficult than those needed for an understanding of math.

All we need to do is offer the child more concrete experiences of math in his everyday life and by age four there will be a spontaneous understanding of it. In presenting math to the child we focus on the decimal system because that is what the child can understand. There are materials that the child can experience with no forced abstract concepts. Every concept is offered first in the concrete with names attached. Symbols are given at a later stage. When the child has a firm understanding of the concrete material and the corresponding symbols and names, the two are presented in association. After that comes a lot of practice to firm up the relationship.  Eventually the child is given exercises that he can do to reinforce the idea. All the processes of math addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are presented in this way. By the time the child is ready for first grade He has a clear understanding of the four basic math operations and has already started memorization of math facts. The primary child is also given a concrete concept of numbers up to a million.  All the math materials aid the child in having a clear understanding, first on a concrete sensorial level and this lays the foundation for a passage to abstraction.