Beading is an important part of Montessori teaching. Large beads are offered to toddlers to improve their motor skills. Small beads are offered to preschoolers to get them ready for writing. Beads – are part of sensorial materials for Montessori. Around four, mathematic bead materials are introduced.

• Bead products instructions and images
• Buy the beads to make your own materials
• Buy the beads to make your own materials

Beads by themselves are inexpensive. But products made from beads seem to sky-rocket in prices. This is a list of resources for finding beading projects, instructions on how to make and use these materials, where to buy beads and finished products. If you know other resources, please share them as comments as the end of the article!

Most of these resources are based on information kindly shared by the members of MontessoriMakers and Playschool6 Yahoo groups. Many thanks to their incredible help!

Here is a link to to a good basic Montessori guide. There is some information on the bead materials.

• Montessori Primary Guide: Introduction to Mathematics. It offers overview of Montessori Mathematics method and it has a few pictures with mathematics materials. Inspirational.
• Montessori Primary Guide: Introduction to quantity. This article explains how to use golden beads to introduce decimals and quantities.
• Montessori Primary Guides – Teens: Quantity. Bead Stairs, bars of tens.
• Montessori Primary Guides – Linear Counting. Instructions on how to teach linear counting using 100 chains of beads.
• Image of a kid working with beads
• Image of bead materials
• Static Addition with Golden Beads in Montessori: an article on usage and directions
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  If you are not a Montessori purist and don’t mind alternatives, I found a few wonderful ideas in MontessoriMakers yahoo group:
  • Colored bead garlands for Christmas trees. Green, white, purple, gold, cut the beads. Green can be cut into 2′s and it is ready for skip counting. Arrow flags can be printed from montessorimaterials.org. Kids can then write the numbers for each sequence. Gold can be stranded into hundreds and tens.
  • Stem wire (typically found in floral arrangement departments in craft stores) and craft beads for a sturdier representation
  • Mardi Gras Beads

  
  Purchasing real glass beads:

  • Glass Beads
  • Alkiproducts: quality of beads was recomended by some parents in montessoriMakers yahoo group.
  • Consumer Crafts