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Math Manipulatives

Students will collaborate to design and create an artistic place to store hand-made math manipulatives that will be used in learning activities.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Recycled Cardboard Snack Cylinder

Steps

  • Step 1

    Math manipulatives help students understand math concepts through hands-on experience. Items such as base ten blocks, pattern blocks that represent fractions, connecting cubes to represent area units, or any other type of manipulatives provide students with the opportunity to visualize and demonstrate their understanding of math concepts.

  • Step 2

    Have students form small groups to design and create an artistic storage container for math manipulatives. It can be made by decorating and stacking recycled containers such as snack cannisters. Each member of the group can create decorative pieces out of Model Magic and then either press them together while the modeling material is moist or glue them to the containers. Have students also make math manipulatives. Their teams should determine the sizes and shapes of the tactile tools they will create and then later use to demonstrate their understanding of math concepts. 

  • Step 3

    When each team's work is complete, students can stack the containers filled with math manipulatives. The class will share these learning tools with each other during hands-on math lessons.

Standards

MATH: Describe, compare, quantify, and classify objects by attributes. Sort objects into categories. 

MATH: Use and connect mathematical representations.

Adaptations

Challenge students to create images out of tangrams, which consist of seven geometric shapes (five right triangles , a square, and a rhomboid) all cut out of a large square. They can use ready-made tangrams if the classroom has a set. Or they can look online to find out how to subdivide a square to create the seven shapes.

Have students play a dominoes game that incorporates math functions. For addition they might, for example,  decide on a sum of 10 and arrange the dominoes so that a domino with a set of five dots and a set of two dots touches the side of another domino that has thee dots on one side. If the other side has four dots, the next player would have to place a domino that has a set of two dots and a set of four dots or any other combination that adds to 10 when combined with four.