DIY Montessori Tactile Numbers-Counters

DIY Montessori recycled tactile numbers-counters boards are an excellent tool to promote rational counting in preschoolers and kindergartners while stimulating the senses.

This DIY Montessori Tactile Numbers-Counters from cardboard will help your child learn the shape of the number by hands-on making numbers from pipe cleaners. Then, through the sense of touch, the child will reinforce numeral versus quantity association by counting pom poms. Thus, through this process, a child is developing a sensory understanding of the quantitative measure of number, which is an otherwise abstract mathematical concept.

DIY Montessori Tactile Numbers-Counters

You’ll Need to Make DIY Montessori Tactile Numbers-Counters:

• recycled cardboard cut into boards 5.5 long by 4.5 inches wide
• pipe cleaners
• pom poms
• a hot glue gun

DIY Numbers Instructions:

First, offer your child to make a number from a pipe cleaner by bending it.

Next, glue a corresponding number of color-matching pom poms to the cardboard next to the numeral.

DIY Montessori Tactile Numbers-Counters

Now, offer your child to trace each number and count and touch each pom pom aloud.

Did you know that triggering a child’s tactile senses enriches the learning experience?

DIY Montessori Tactile Numbers-Counters

Behind-the-scenes video of how Julia ( 8 urs) made these tactile number boards. 

Engaging A Child in the Process

By engaging your child in the process of making these tactile boards, you are igniting their interest, awakening the sense of pride and ownership for their work. Thus they are more likely to work with this activity more often or for more extended periods. Engaging can be as simple as offering a child to pick a color of pom poms. Older children can bend pipe cleaners to form a number. And please always supervise your child when using a hot glue gun. 

Montessori Odd and Even Extension

To the left are traditional Montessori Cards and Counters, which include red wooden numbers and red wooden circle counters. Please note that you should introduce these DIY tactile boards after Montessori Cards and Counters. Different colors of tactile boards can be visually distracting to a smaller child. However, after a child is familiar with the traditional odd and even work, you can use these tactile boards to practice the concept of odd and even numbers.

See a detailed lesson with the video on Odd/Even presentation here in a post – Valentines Odd and Even Montessori.

Why Sensorial Stimulation is Important in Early Years

Sensorial exploration is extremely important during the child’s first six years of life. Dr. Maria Montessoi described the First Plane of Development (birth to 6 yrs) as a period of the Absorbent Mind. First Plane is characterized by a “young child’s behavior of quickly and effortlessly assimilating the sensorial stimuli of his or her environment. A child effortlessly absorbs information from the senses, language, culture, and the development of concepts.” The child is self-observed, has a self-centered viewpoint, is focused primarily on the sensorial exploration of a factual world. Materials are prepared mainly for individual use by a child. Dr. Montessori believed that this power is unique to the first plane, and that it fades as the child approaches the age of six. So, triggering sensorial exploration during the first six years of life proves to be most beneficial to a child’s development.

Child’s Absorbent Mind

A child three to six years of age has a conscious absorbent mind.  “It is as if the child, having absorbed the world by an unconscious kind of intelligence, now ‘lays his hands to it.”   Now it is the hand, as a ‘prehensile organ of the mind,’ not just the senses, which move the child through a period of constructive ‘perfectionment’ – refining the acquisitions already made.” ~  Explained Dr. Montessori.

Below are our DIY Montessori Tactile Numbers-Counters numbers up close.

Montessori Term Normalization

Dr. Montessori also defined a psychological state she termed  “normalization” (in children from three to six years old). This state arises from concentration and focuses on activity that serves the child’s developmental needs. Normalization is also characterized by “spontaneous discipline, continuous and happy work, social sentiments of help and sympathy for others… A child who concentrates is immensely happy.” ~ Dr. Montessori observed.

  So, by creating a prepared environment full of tactile stimuli, triggering the child sensorially, we hope to offer the child a rich learning environment and instill a lifelong love of learning. 

Have you tried making DIY Recycled Cardboard Tactile Numbers from Pipe Cleaners and Pom Poms? Leave a comment if you did!

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