The Golden Beads are a cornerstone of the Montessori math materials. These manipulatives are used to expose children to the concepts of place value through hands-on exploration. There are units, tens, hundreds and thousands.
Students are first introduced to the quantities learning the names of the unit, ten, hundred and thousand. During this time, they learn that ten of each quantity makes up the next category--for example, ten units makes a ten, ten tens makes a hundred and ten hundreds make a thousand. Once the students become comfortable with the quantities, the numeral cards are introduced. Students match numeral and quantity. Often this lesson is referred to as "fetching" since the students are fetching beads from the shelf to match their number cards.
Once the student has had much practice with fetching golden beads and matching quantity and numeral, s/he can use the golden beads to perform the operations--addition, subtraction, multiplication & division. It is at this time that students are alo introduced to concepts of carrying or exchanging as necessary.