Noah brought home lots of schoolwork last Friday. Here’s a picture of my favorite piece:
Yup. That’s counting by NINES right there. AKA the 9 Times Table results! Or in Montessori-speak, counting the 9 bead chain. (Actually, in Montessori, they probably call it counting the blue bead chain.)
Ok, his handwriting is still a work in progress — you can be forgiven if you think that says 57 instead of 27, or if 72 or any of the four 81s are unclear. But if you look at the whole thing, you can see clearly that Noah was counting something in sets of 9.
He also did some “research” on the Goblin Shark, but I’m not sure how much of that was Noah’s vs the after-school teacher’s. So it looks cool, but I don’t like it as much as I love this obviously entirely independent counting work.
Montessori math rocks! (Not to deny Noah’s independent genius, of course.) My son is way ahead in 1st grade math after Montessori pre-K and K. I love all the Montessori subjects, but somehow their approach to math really strikes me as way beyond traditional public school approaches. Go Noah!