Primary and Elementary Mathematics - Division

Are you planning to do elementary Montessori and already do primary?

Do this for one of the division materials and save yourself $15-ish plus shipping. Do NOT order the unit division board.

I asked my son to set this up with a sample problem so I could show you all;
he insisted that 2 divided by 1 was a "good example".
Hm-mm. :)

Order the Long Division material (Division with Racks and Tubes or Test Tube Division).

Put most of it away for most of primary; but keep out one green board, the set of green "skittles" and 100 green beads, stored in a box (the box that it comes with has 4 compartments - you could maybe use 1 for the beads, 1 for the skittles, 1 for sample problems and 1 for possible answers to match?). This will be used for unit division, 1 / 1 through 81 / 9.

Pull it out again in older primary for short division - leave three boards in storage and 3 sets of skittles. Short division work ensues (the children will do 7-digit dividends with 1-digit divisors).

Pull everything out in lower elementary for long division, which has an extensive album page - and it will be used through about age 10. Well worth the investment (if bought alone, it can be purchased from IFIT for $90-100 total, including shipping).


Already homemade the unit division material? Keep that material and add:
For Long Division, duplicate what you've done to create the remaining boards and skittles; purchase or paint the needed beads; and find racks which can be painted and that will hold 10 test tubes each (each tube needs to hold 10 beads). The bowls are easy enough to find at thrift stores or Montessori Services or other places - just paint accordingly.

It's a small thing, but on our homeschool budgets!? And perhaps space-limitation? It's worth it to buy one material and use it for a variety of purposes.



TIP 2: 

Repeat the above process for the multiplication! Don't buy the primary multiplication board - just use the red board from the Long Division material. The (red) multiplication board generally has 10 columns though, along with a slot for the number (we placed ours on top), so you'll have to adapt the presentation (we just only did through 9x9 on the board and worked on the 10s separately. It worked out fine.