Manipulatives for Hands-on Math
From wooden blocks to needle felted gnomes, Cuisenaire Rods to pebbles, feathers and seeds, natural math manipulatives bring understanding to mathematical concepts.
Roll the dice! Sort the Gems! Math Manipulatives bring texture, music and art to mathematics.
Table of Contents for Math Manipulatives
- Math Gnomes
- Basics of Making Needle Felted Math Manipulatives
- Making Needle Felted Sheep
- Needle Felted Math Manipulatives
- Math Manipulatives made from Natural Materials
- Raindrop and Thunder Math Activity
- Rainbow Math Manipulatives
- Natural Math Manipulatives
- Wooden Acorn Math Manipulatives
- Why Manipulatives?
- Thanksgiving Pumpkin Math Manipulatives
- Christmas is the Time to Look for Math Manipulatives
- Sea Glass Math Manipulatives
- Sand Dollar Math
- Two-sided Counters
- Math Manipulatives for Teaching Math
- Look Who's Talking about Math Manipulatives:
- Antique and Unique Math Manipulatives
- Math Manipulatives
- More Math Lenses
- Natural Math Manipulatives are in the Four Wheeler's Online Unit Study Directory
- Tell us about your favorite Math Manipulatives
- About the Author of this Lens
Math Gnomes
Math Gnomes bring imagination, creativity and art to the study of math. Each of the gnomes represents a different operation: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
The teacher invites exploration of math concepts by using the gnomes to tell a story. With a sense of wonder and magic, children then use natural math manipulatives, such as painted mushroom or wooden acorns to explore the math concepts introduced in the story.
- Math Gnome Set with Gnome King and mini 'shrooms on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
- Complete Math Gnome Set, including four gnomes (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing), a large Gnome King, 20 mini mushrooms for counting, sorting and playing. Fun Waldorf education game.
- Waldorf Mathematics Curriculum Guides - Making Math Meaningful
- Bob and Nancy's Bookshop.
- Serendipity: Gnomes and Gnumbers: A Mathematical Tale
- Once upon a time, in the deepest, darkest recesses of the earth, there lived a clan of four greedy gnomes. The first was as blue as a crisp, clear sky. The second was the shade of a red apple in...
Basics of Making Needle Felted Math Manipulatives
Soon you will have dozens or even hundreds of natural math manipulatives to work with.
Needle Felting Basic Shapes Tutorial
This is a supplement for an online class. It is the steps for folding, rolling and needling a torso shape for a soft sculpted figure. For more info visit me at http://www.feltalive.com/ Etsy Shop www.feltalive.etsy.com
Runtime: 9:35
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Making Needle Felted Sheep
Needle Felted Math Manipulatives
Make a Felt Sheep, Part 1
A short movie (in 2 parts) of author, Kim Chatel creating a needle-felted sheep to go along with her book, "Rainbow Sheep."
Runtime: 6:22
19348 views
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Needle Felted Math Manipulatives
Make a Felt Sheep, Part 2
A short movie, in 2 parts of author Kim Chatel, making a needle-felted sheep, from her book Rainbow Sheep, from Guardian Angel Publishing
Runtime: 7:22
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Math Manipulatives made from Natural Materials
Start with natural roving wool to make your needle felted gnomes, animals or other math manipulatives.
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Raindrop and Thunder Math Activity
Natural Glass Gems on Roving Felt Math Mats
The teacher claps her hands to indicate thunder.
The children listen for the number of thunder claps and place that number of raindrops in the sky.
Gems and Glass Beads feel nice in your hand, sparkle in the sunlight and make a soft tinkling sound when poured out onto a felt math mat.
Variation:
These floral marbles could represent water dripping from icicles at the end of Winter or sap dripping from Maple Trees in Spring when Garner Rix taps his trees to make Maple Syrup.
Natural Roving Wool Felt makes a soft math mat for counting and sorting your glass bead manipulatives.
Rainbow Math Manipulatives
Natural Math Manipulatives
All pine cones have seeds or nuts inside. In the fall these cones can be collected. Notice how the cone opens up when is dries out and as it dries the seeds will fall out. Get the cone wet again and it will close up.
Use the seeds for counting.
No matter where you live you can find sticks and stones which are wonderful math manipulatives. These are the types of math manipulatives that Garner Rix must have used.
Pine cones and sunflower seeds follow the Fibonacci sequence.
Wooden Acorn Math Manipulatives
- Maine Wood Company
- Maine Wood Company Wholesale Wood Turnings Wooden Products - Eggs Cubes & Blocks Candle Sticks & Cups Dowel Caps (Doll Heads) Hearts Spools Drawer Pulls & Knobs Buttons & Plugs Rings Miniatures Spindles Finials & Flag Tops Stars Discs Boxes & Containers Buckets & Pails Bells SECONDS Bugs & Related L
- Acorns for the Squirrels
- Thanksgiving is coming and the squirrels are counting their acorns. Read tales of squirrels who are preparing for Thanksgiving by making place mats, toilet paper tube squirrels and other Thanksgiving decorations.What will they be thankful for and will they remember their manners at the Thanksgiving
Why Manipulatives?
The more types of manipulatives students use, the more knowledge and enjoyment they can get from the unit.
-naturalmath.com
Thanksgiving Pumpkin Math Manipulatives
After making 10 or 15 felted pumpkins, what can you do with them?
How about exploring triangles? How many pumpkins do you need to make a triangle? What is the least number? Can you make a triangle with 3, 4, 5, pumpkins? Which numbers of pumpkins actually work to make triangles?
Now ask the same questions about pyramids. What about when you try to make 3D pyramids.
Record the numbers of pumpkins you need to make each geometric shape. Are the number sequences arithmetic? Can you predict the next number in the sequence?
Activities like this lead children into the understanding of number facts and later on algebra, functions, and geometry.
Felted wool pumpkin reflects the autumn season on one's nature table.
- A Waldorf Nature Table is a Wonderful Addition to Any Home - Associated Content
- What is a nature table?
It is an area where things are brought in from outside to reflect the changes of the seasons. Things on the nature table are meant to be gently played with and inspected by the children of the house. - Felted Pumpkin Pattern
Learn how to make felted pumpkins.
Christmas is the Time to Look for Math Manipulatives
It is amazing the things that come in quantities at Christmas time that can be turned into Math Manipulatives.
I first discovered green and red wooden beads strung on strings as garlands for the Christmas tree. Now each year I look for more and here are a few I found this year:
Sea Glass Math Manipulatives
Sea glass can be sorted, counted or used to make patterns. Collect sea glass on the next time you go to the beach.
Sand Dollar Math
Sand Dollars are Natural Math Manipulatives found at the Beach
Buy at AllPosters.com
The beach is a wonderful place to find natural math manipulatives. Dried Sand Dollars have five distinct holes and most have five notches in the edges. Count the holes in the sand dollars by Skip Counting by 5's.
Buy at AllPosters.com
One year at a beach in Costa Rica we found live sand dollars just below the surface of the sand at the edge of the water at low tide. We ran our fingers through the waterlogged sand and found sand dollars by the hundreds.We put them on the top of the sand and watched them work their way back under. Then we collected several at a time and watched them gracefully disappear.
This became a teaching moment that we couldn't resist: Adding and subtracting sand dollars from the surface of the sand.
- Sand Dollar Facts
- 1. The sand dollar's mouth has a jaw with five teethlike sections to grind up tiny plants and animals. Sometimes a sand dollar.
2. A sand Dollar chews" its food for fifteen minutes before swallowing. It can take two days for the food to digest.
3. Scientists can age a sand dollar by counting the growth rings on the plates of the exoskeleton. Sand dollars usually live six to 10 years.
Lots more facts ...
Two-sided Counters
- Math Learning Center: Number Combinations
- Students toss two-sided counters on a special "quiet" felt workmat, then record the results.
- Pre-K Math: More, Less, Same - PreKinders
Spray paint lima beans with two colors so that they have one color on each side. Place ten beans in a cup. Children dump the beans onto a mat (I used a sheet of craft foam for the mat). They count each color to see how many beans landed on the red side and how many landed on the blue side. They compare to see which colors have the most, least, or same amount.
Math Manipulatives for Teaching Math
What kind of Math Manipulatives do You look for?
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Evelyn_Saenz says:
I like to make math manipulatives from Lima Beans. Just spray paint them and use a fine tipped brush to paint the details.
Posted December 21, 2008
Manufactured
groovyoldlady says:
We bought the MathUSee blocks and then a friend gave us more. They're awesome, especially for kinesthetic 7 year-old. However, we also use found manipulatives like pennies, marbles, grapes, Polly Pockets, pebbles, jelly beans, sock balls. You name it, we've probably used it!
Posted October 31, 2008
Look Who's Talking about Math Manipulatives:
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- delicious50
- NLVM Algebra Manipulatives http://bit.ly/y9YVR ship_teched math
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- mathwhiz
- NLVM - Virtual manipulatives for Math, great on smartboard http://bit.ly/LPONZ
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- TeacherRadio
- Next Tuesday (07/14/09) I will be talking about using manipulatives to teach Math & the Math Their Way approach http://tinyurl.com/ls3364
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- delicious50
- Spirograph Math http://bit.ly/dDhvk drawing fun games geometry Interactive manipulatives Math spirograph
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- jodybritten
- trackmate for moving beyond keyboard/mouse http://trackmate.media.mit.edu some cool potential for kids & math (interactive manipulatives)
Antique and Unique Math Manipulatives
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand byMath Manipulatives
Look for items that appeal to all five senses.
1. Are appealing to the eye.
2. Sound nice when dropped gently.
3. Use a variety of textures.
4. Smell fresh and natural.
5. If you can't eat them, at least make sure they are non-toxic.
More Math Lenses
More Math Manipulatives, Games and Ideas
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Pumpkins and Place Value
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Pick the biggest pumpkin you can find. Cut off the top and smell the fresh pumpkin smell. Carving a Jack O'Lantern leads into a mathematical unit study of place value that incorporates all five senses. Counting pumpkin seeds into groups of 10's, 100...
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Hands-on Math Activities
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Children learn and truly understand mathematical concepts best when engaged in hands-on activities and games. By manipulating everyday objects, playing games and finding out ways of solving everyday problems children gain a true understanding of the...
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It's Turkey Time!
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Wild Turkeys nearly became extinct in the 1930's but times have changed and turkeys have benefited. Now turkeys are often found in fields and on the edge of the woods. In this unit you will learn about Wild Turkeys, read turkey facts and stories, pl...
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Enjoying Educational Games
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What do kids do best? Play of course. Why not encourage this natural tendency by providing your children with great entertaining games that just happen to be educational as well. Educational Games such as Mancala and Set teach math concep...
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Skip Count, Skip Count, Count by Two's
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Skip Counting is what you do when you count by 10's, 5's or 2's. All young children learn to Skip Count but did you realize that this is one of the beginning steps to learning multiplication. This lens has rhymes, songs and activities for teaching S...
Natural Math Manipulatives are in the Four Wheeler's Online Unit Study Directory
Thank you to the Four Wheelers for including the Natural Math Manipulatives in their Online Unit Study Directory.
- Internet Directory of Unit Studies
- The Four Wheelers Internet Directory of Unit Studies contains a list, roughly arranged by subject, of links to unit studies that are published on the Internet.
Tell us about your favorite Math Manipulatives
Donnette wrote...
Hi Evelyn, since discovering lens rolling, I'm enjoying it hugely!!! Favourited, rated 5* & Lensrolled to http://www.squidoo.com/st-aiden-s-homeschool
Best wishes
Posted April 21, 2009
Mickie_G wrote...
I taught in a Montessori school for many years. I love the golden beads. I also love the peg boards used in advanced math in a Montessori school. I finally understood what a square root was by seeing it on the peg board.
Great lens. I love the felt knomes and the pumpkins.
Posted February 20, 2009
Jimmie wrote...
I love all these natural manipulatives. My hands wanted to reach out and touch the wooden acorns, the sea glass, and the rocks. Wonderful ideas! Lensrolling to my living math lens.
Posted December 30, 2008
About the Author of this Lens
Evelyn's Hands-On Learning Blog.Find out what I'm doing when I'm not making math manipulatives:
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Evelyn Saenz: Lensography of a Teacher
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My passion is teaching and finding ways to teach children in fun, hands-on, creative ways. The unit studies I make on Squidoo reflect my view that learning should be integrated and no skills should be taught in isolation. I believe that each topic s...
