Passage to abstraction is the next area of mathematics in the Children’s House. This is typically around the age of six that we present these materials. The child moves away from depending on concrete materials to doing more work in her mind. “Because the children, leaving the material, very easily come to love writing out the operation thus doing abstract mental work and acquiring a kind of natural and spontaneous leaning towards mental calculations,” (Montessori, p. 313, 1949). The child can be successful with few aids at this point. We offer the child a sensorial impression to hierarchies of a million. The child works with the small and large bead frames to help abstraction happen mentally. The children begin to work mainly in their minds and not on paper.
