Do you know April is National Mathematics Education Month? If you already knew this, you’re a yard ahead of me! 🙂 This means you can look forward to a few math-related blogs this month. Let’s begin by chatting about math manipulatives. What types of manipulatives do you use with your kiddos? What tips do you have about managing and storing manipulatives?
Counting on your replies,
Diane
It is also National Poetry Month and I was pleasantly surprised when on April Fool’s Day my students worked on diamond poems that one of my girls wrote one about math and geometry! Maybe I’m off to a good start for the month!
My newest favorite manipulative for math are the small seasonal erasers you can find at the dollar stores and in the seasonal aisles at the larger stores. Depending on what erasers I find, the children can count, sort, compare, classify, make patterns, and even have time doing things like 1-to-1 correspondence. They are so inexpensive and easy to store for the following year in baggies or in index card size boxes. I can set out new centers every time I find new erasers!
Whatever I can find – linking cubes, counting bears, cereal, goldfish, buttons, die cuts, and so forth.
I store each manipulative in their own tub and stack the tubs on the shelf.
I use storage bags for my math manps. See through and easy storage.
I have a cart with 8 trays. I used each tray/drawer to hold a different type of manipulatives. I have labeled the drawers with a picture and what is inside so my students can easily find them. This has worked great for my class so far!
I always try to have my math manipulatives match the theme:
Ocean Life – fish, dolphins, sharks, etc.
Nutrition – fruit
Farms – farm animals
Fairy Tales – “gold” coins
Community Workers – firefighters & police officers
Growing Things – flowers
Zoo Animals – monkeys
etc . . .
My manipulatives either come from school supply stores or dollar stores. I store them in either baggies or plastic containers and keep them in my classroom closets.
Hi! I love teaching math and using manipulatives! My favorite manipulative is double-sided counters. You can use them for LOTS of things (addition, subtraction, fractions, measuring, game pieces) and they are cheap!
I store team sets of manipulatives in gallon size baggies, inside a 2 gallon baggie. I keep these bags inside an empty desk, that I keep at all table groups. It takes no time to get them out, dump them in the middle of the table and use them. Also, here’s my tip on keeping manipulatives from becoming toys during instruction time: before your lesson, give the class 5 minute “exploration” time and let them know that during the lesson, they can’t play with them, because they’ve already had a chance. This has significantly cut down on behavior issues during instruction time and it only takes 5 minutes!
Today we used large 3D shapes to describe their properties. Each shape is made of thick plastic and has a thinner plastic layer inside, for students to take out and see the shape’s net. Storage depends on the size, but baggies, plastic tubs, and baskets work well for me.
I have created manipulatives using milk jug lids and soda bottle lids with pictures, words, or numbers related to a specific topic, concept, or theme. I then have the children use them to create patterns, work on sequencing, or math problems. I then use formula cans to create the holder for the manipulatives.
An example:
I placed a picture of the title and author on the outside of the can. Next week we are reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar so the outside of the can has this title and author in it. I then pasted pictures from the story on milk jug lids. I will then have students work on sequencing using the lids and have also in the past had them use pictures to create math problems based on the number of items ate throughout the book.
I then store the cans in my closet and pull out the themed cans as I need them. These manipulatives are a perfect size for Pre-K and K students. I use soda bottle caps for older students.
My favorite manipulative is dried beans. You can use them for so many things. I’ve used them for counting, grouping, measuring, etc. I store them in a plastic container with measuring cups, spoons, and small plastic plates.