The Montessori Path to Mastery in Math

In the Casa Program, children are busily laying the CONCRETE foundations for numeracy upon which all of their subsequent understanding of Math will be built. To facilitate this endeavour, we spend a lot of time and have a multitude of wonderful hands-on, concrete, Montessori Math materials that really solidify a child’s understanding of the relationship between numeral and quantity that constitutes a NUMBER.

• 5 = NUMERAL
• ***** = QUANTITY
• Numeral + Quantity = NUMBER

When you understand the relationship that forms the number 5, then think of all of the amazing things that you can do with that 5! You can compare it with other numbers; you can use it in a pattern/sequence; you can use it to measure ingredients when baking a cake; you can use it to do addition, multiplication, subtraction, division, etc. In fact, by the time a child graduates from the Casa Program they will have experience with numbers into the thousands and will have been introduced to all 4 operations with our concrete materials.
As a natural byproduct of using the concrete Montessori Math materials to cultivate a concrete understanding of core concepts in math, our penultimate goal for a Casa child is to have them see the amazing potential in a 5, and the rest of its number friends for that matter. This sense of wonder with numbers is what forms the sturdiest component of a foundation in Math!