Decanomial Bead Bars (AMI)

Description

The Decanomial Bead Bars supply the full quantity of coloured bead bars required to lay out the complete multiplication table from one through ten as a single, continuous square of colour, often called the decanomial square. Every combination from one times one through ten times ten is represented by its own bead bar, sorted and supplied in the precise quantities the layout demands.

Building the full decanomial square is a substantial undertaking, usually spread across several working sessions, in which a child lays out row after row of bead bars until the completed square reveals the symmetrical, diagonal pattern of square numbers running from corner to corner. Along the way, the child encounters every multiplication fact from one to one hundred, not as a memorised line of a times table, but as a visible, countable quantity of beads.

Few materials make the structure of multiplication as immediately visible as this one, giving an elementary child a lasting, geometric memory of the times tables that written drilling alone rarely achieves.