Teen Board with Beads: 11–19
Quantity meets symbol: beside each numeral on the board, your child lays one golden ten-bar plus the colored bead bar that matches, and discovers that 14 really is ten-and-four you can hold and count.
Materials
- Seguin Board A and the unit cards 1–9 from the previous lesson
- Nine golden ten-bars (or nine pipe cleaners strung with ten beads each, or strips of ten dry beans glued to card)
- One colored bead bar of each size 1–9 (pipe-cleaner bars work — keep each size its own consistent color)
No materials at home? Use the virtual Teen Board (Seguin A).
Before this lesson
Aims
Direct
- Associate the quantities eleven through nineteen with their numerals
- Count from 11 to 19 with real objects, one bead at a time
- Understand each teen number as one ten plus some units
Indirect
- Foundation for place value and the golden bead work of the decimal system
- Preparation for addition: "ten and four make fourteen" is felt before it is ever written
- Preparation for the Ten Board and counting to 99
Presentation
- 1 Lay one golden ten-bar beside the top slat of the board. Count its beads together, touching each one.One, two, three… ten. This bar is ten.
- 2 Slide the 1 card over the zero so the slat reads 11, then lay the single red bead next to the ten-bar.Ten and one make eleven.
- 3 Count every bead in the row from the beginning — all ten on the bar, then the one — touching each bead as you go.…nine, ten, eleven. Eleven!
- 4 Move down a row. Slide the 2 card over the zero, lay a fresh ten-bar and the green two-bar beside it, and count to twelve together.Ten and two make twelve.
- 5 Invite your child to build the next rows: for each one, the card, one golden ten-bar, and the colored bar that matches the card. Continue as far as their interest lasts.
- 6 Ask your child to check a row: count the beads out loud, then read the numeral. Do they say the same number?Count the beads. Does it match what the board says?
- 7 Another day, reverse the game: lay out a ten-bar and a colored bar first, and ask your child to build the numeral that matches the beads.
Points of interest
- Each colored bar is its own color and length, so the row for 19 looks strikingly longer than the row for 11
- The colored bar has exactly as many beads as the number on the card — no more, no fewer
- The golden ten-bar is identical in every row; only the little colored bar changes
Control of error
- Counting the beads and reading the numeral must give the same number; if they disagree, something in the row needs fixing
- The colored bars have fixed lengths — a five-bar simply cannot be counted as six
- On the virtual board, a check mark appears beside a row only when the bead quantity equals the numeral shown
Vocabulary
- ten-bar
- bead bar
- quantity
- match
- teen
Variations
- Build a row with a deliberate mistake (wrong bar or wrong card) and let your child find it by counting
- Build the rows out of order — beads for 16 first — and read whatever appears
- Say a number like "fifteen" and have your child build both the card and the beads from scratch
Extensions
- Count out 14 dry beans, put ten of them in a cup, and see the "ten and four" sitting on the table
- Draw a teen number as a picture: one long bar of ten circles plus loose circles for the units
Follow-up work (pencil & paper)
- Print a teens practice sheet: your child counts pictured ten-bars and unit beads, then writes the matching teen numeral in pencil.Printable: Teens & Tens
- On paper, write prompts like "10 + __ = 13". Your child lays out the beads, counts, and fills in the blank.
- Bean counting: scoop a small handful of dry beans (somewhere between 10 and 19), group ten of them together, and write the total as a numeral.
What comes next
When your child can build and read 11–19 with beads confidently, continue to the Ten Board (Seguin B) lessons, where the same card trick names 10, 20, 30 … 90, and then to counting every number from 11 to 99 with beads.
Next in this strand: Ten Board: Names of the Tens