Montessori Stamp Game~ a DIY version

Bunny has been working really hard on her golden bead work and she is now very board with addition (her words, not mine)! So I thought I would look into getting the stamp game so that she could have a new and more challenging element! The Montessori stamp game is a box of wooden tiles that are green, red, blue, and green again. Each tile has the number 1, 10, 100, or 1000 so that the child can use them instead of bead to help move them toward abstraction! For example, if you were to build the number 4625, you would get 4 green 1000 tiles, 6 red 100 tiles, 2 blue 10 tiles, and 5 green 1 tiles. Then you would make the other number and push the tiles together to add the numbers together! Super easy and fun for the kids!

Well a stamp game set (like the one above) run about $30 plus shipping! I was hoping to hold off on too much more school spending, and it just looked like it was too easy to make! Well I went to research wooden tiles. Simply put, to make it out of wooden tiles was going to cost me just as much as buying! So I wanted another way. Then I saw the pile of buttons I had laying around from other Montessori works and I wondered if I could use them! So I pulled it together and put each of the colored buttons in small containers with the number on the lid. Then I put it out and presented it to Bunny this week. She really liked it! We built a number together and then she built one. Then we did an addition problem! The other good thing about the stamp game is that it takes less material which means Bunny can move her work upstairs if she needs to. This means we can work, even when Tadpole (who eats everything) is here! So here are the pictures of my DIY stamp game:

Here is laid out. I put the bead at the top so Bunny could see the values. Maybe not what I should have done, but she didn't seem to refer to them.

Here is her addition problem

Here she is thinking really hard! :)

It is really fun and I think we will do some more this week! The only thing that I am not sure about is that I don't have the number on each button. Does anyone know if that is necessary or will the buttons work? If you have a thought let me know! I would love to hear what you think! Happy Schooling!