What do you think of when you hear a Montessori teacher describe, “hands-on, concrete manipulatives?” Maybe it’s the building blocks we call the Pink Tower or the Broad Stair. Maybe it’s the child-sized tools so abundant in Practical Life. Some are easy to imagine. Others may look far simpler than they really are. The Spindle Boxes, an early and critical lesson in the Montessori math sequence, is one of those sneak lessons – it looks straight forward and simple but it’s actually quite complex.
The boxes, which are sometimes built as a single, long box, are divided into ten compartments, numbered from 0 – 9, and accompanied by a basket containing 45 wooden spindles. The child sorts the spindles into compartments by number, one spindle in the compartment marked, “1,” two in the compartment marked, “2,” and so on. Easy, right?
Not for little ones learning about numerals and number for the first time. This is the introductory lesson to the concept of “0,” the first time a child is presented with a concrete space within which nothing is placed. Zero is the first abstraction in mathematical understanding: a concept only capable of being understood by the imagination of what could be there but is not. This is a more complicated concept than many adults imagine, and one which many children struggle to master. The spindle setting itself requires extended concentration and recall. The child must remember the numeral, count out the appropriate number of spindles, and return them to the accurate compartment. Meanwhile, the spindles become more challenging to manage the more you handle at once. For the small child trying to hold seven or eight or nine wooden spindles in one hand, the balance and coordination demands draw attention to the difference in quantities. Finally, only forty-five spindles are available. If a child gets to the higher number compartments and finds that they don’t have enough spindles left in the basket, they must return to re-count the previous compartments and identify where their calculations went awry…
Elegant in design, complex in concept, self-directed and self-correcting: The Spindle Boxes are an ideal example of the beauty and intentional experiences embedded in the Montessori materials.