Natural Math Manipulatives
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Manipulatives for Hands-on Math
A hands-on approach to learning new concepts involving all 5 senses makes understanding easier and quicker for learners of all styles. Here you will find manipulatives that intrigue, excite and encourage exploration.
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.
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.
Photo Credit: Wooden Abacus
Used under creative commons
Table of Contents for Math Manipulatives
Tree Block Natural Math Manipulatives
Sea Glass Math Manipulatives
Sea Glass by Tealtreasures
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Sea glass can be sorted, counted or used to make patterns. Collect sea glass the next time you go to the beach. Then offer a glassful of sea glass to your children and ask them to sort the pieces. How will they decide to sort them? Will they sort the sea glass according to color, shape, or ...?
Another day, bring out these natural math manipulatives to teach addition and subtraction. Lay out pieces of sand paper to represent the beach and ask the children to pretend to be the ocean waves that wash in and out carrying pieces of sea glass. Tell the children, two pieces of sea glass wash onto the shore. (The children place 2 pieces of sea glass on the sandpaper.) Then tell them that the ocean washes 3 more pieces of sea glass onto the shore. Ask them how many pieces of sea glass are now on the shore. 2 + 3 = 5. Five pieces of sea glass are now on the beach.
Sand Dollar Math
Sand Dollars are Natural Math Manipulatives found at the Beach
Marrott,...
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.
Verderber, Gustav
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. A sand dollar has five teeth-like sections in its mouth for grinding its food. Sometimes a sand dollar.
2. A sand Dollar very slowly chews its food before swallowing, often for up to 15 minutes.
3. A sand dollar has growth rings like those of a tree that con be counted to determine how many years the sand dollar has grown. Using this method, Scientists have found that sand dollars can live up to 10 years.
Lots more facts ...
Math at the Beach
Natural Math Manipulatives can be found anywhere
On a beach in Costa Rica we discovered live sand dollars and turn them into a day of learning with a focus on math. We looked at their round flat shapes. We counted their five openings while watching them breathe and sift sand. We could see the five openings even after they had buried themselves a bit. We skip counted the holes by fives and then wondered about the number of suction cups found on their undersides arranged in concentric circles. Come discover mathematics on a beach in Costa Rica...
Math Gnomes
Waldorf Math Gnomes
Photo Credit: Math Gnomes
on Flickr, Creative Commons
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
These three videos will teach you the basics of how to make needle felted math manipulatives. You can use this technique to make math gnomes or any other little creatures that you are studying about.
Soon you will have dozens or even hundreds of natural math manipulatives to work with.
Soon you will have dozens or even hundreds of natural math manipulatives to work with.
Making Needle Felted Sheep
Needle Felted Math Manipulatives
Create dozens of sheep to count as you go to sleep. Needle felted sheep feel soft, and several fit nicely into a little child's hand. Imagine the delight in the eyes of your children when you hand them a needle felted sheep. Make just a few and then show the children how to make sheep. Soon you will have a whole flock for adding, subtracting and manipulating...
curated content from YouTube
Math Manipulatives made from Natural Materials
Start with natural roving wool to make your needle felted gnomes, animals or other math manipulatives.
Amazing things can be made with roving wool. Needle felting is easy and very satisfying craft. Make a few dozen small birds, animals or plants and use them as math manipulatives. Your children will quickly be able to help you. What fun it is to work together to create these natural math manipulatives.
Photo Credit: Green Felt Bird by TinyApartmentCrafts
Used under creative commons
Amazing things can be made with roving wool. Needle felting is easy and very satisfying craft. Make a few dozen small birds, animals or plants and use them as math manipulatives. Your children will quickly be able to help you. What fun it is to work together to create these natural math manipulatives.
Raindrop and Thunder Math Activity
Natural Glass Gems on Roving Felt Math Mats
Use light blue felt for math mats and and clear flat floral marbles for the raindrop counters.
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.
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
Children learn about sequencing and size relationships as they fit the pieces into each other.
Natural Math Manipulatives
Photo Credit: Cone full of Pine Nuts
on WikiMedia Commons
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
- Acorns are Fun by SouleMama
- SouleMama keeps a bowlful of wooden acorns out for her child to use as math manipulatives. The natural wood feels smooth in the hand and invites manipulation...
Why Manipulatives?
The more types of manipulatives students use, the more knowledge and enjoyment they can obtain
from the unit.
-naturalmath.com
Lost Teeth as Math Manipulatives
Graphing Teeth
As your children loose teeth you can keep track of the special events on a graph. Be sure to count the number of teeth left in their mouths as well as the empty spaces.
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. - Learn how to make felted pumpkins.
Photo used with permission from Jordana
Learn how to make felted pumpkins. Knitty is a free web-only knitting magazine with a sense of humor. Fun patterns, fabulous articles. Come and see for yourself!
Christmas is the Time to Look for Math Manipulatives
Christmas 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:
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:
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
Photo Credit: manipulatives
on Flickr, Creative Commons
What kind of Math Manipulatives do You look for?
Homemake
AngelDey says:
Mostly homemade, but sometimes math games are just too good to resist. I think it depends on what kind of math I am teaching mostly and if I can find a way to create the manipulatives on my own.
rwoman says:
I never bought math manipulatives, we simply used "found" objects and counted as a part of every day activity.
skiesgreen says:
I have always counted everything around me. Sometimes this drives me mad as I count the tiles on a floor, the number of slates in a venetian blind, how many times someone's phone rings. So I guess I prefer the natural to the manufactured.
CoolFoto says:
My world is full of adults, so, no kids to teach. But, I wish I, myself, had been shown these concepts as a child. I have never enjoyed math!
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.
Manufactured
mizrae says:
I used real cars and match box cars.
theholidayplace says:
Manufactured are often cheaper and very good quality too
akumar46 says:
Both kind of Math Manipulatives are good.
SnoopyGirl1 says:
Both... but my favorite is a jar of different colored buttons, They are great for counting and patterning. I also use uniflex cute, colored bear counters and more.
Jimmie says:
They are both wonderful!
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- Muggins & Knock-Out Wooden Math Games: Muggins math board games and manipulatives are not only educational but m... http://t.co/eAjVz0zz
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Antique and Unique Math Manipulatives
Math 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
Natural Math Manipulatives are in the Stone Stoup Homeschooling Online Unit Study Directory
Thank you to the Four Wheelers for having included the Natural Math Manipulatives in their directory. This directory has now been passed on to Stone Soup Homeschooling.
- Unit Studies: Stone Soup Homeschool Network - Stone Soup Homeschool Network
- A free Unit Study Database, featuring unit studies on nearly every subject!
Tell us about your favorite Math Manipulatives
What to do with Math Manipulatives
If you could buy just one book to help your children learn math in a hands-on way, choose:
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ketulpatel2385
May 17, 2012 @ 8:38 am | delete
- loved reading this lense. great work.
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theholidayplace
Apr 15, 2012 @ 1:43 pm | delete
- Great way to teach maths
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mamabush
Mar 14, 2012 @ 12:47 pm | delete
- Math manipulatives are so expensive, so I love to find things around the house I can use instead. Thanks for giving me some great new ideas! :)
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whiteskyline
Sep 4, 2011 @ 4:08 pm | delete
- Interesting concept. Math was my best subject, yet this may come in handy for the baby soon. I think visuals such as these are great teaching devices.
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jackwood
Aug 13, 2011 @ 3:27 pm | delete
- Maths can be quite confusing when your young. I think one of the most difficult things is trying to relate to the abstract nature of numbers. Anything you can do to relate maths to the real world like using wooden blocks or a missing tooth grah is a great help to children and can be the difference between whether they understand a concept or not.
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AngelDey
Jul 24, 2011 @ 8:35 pm | delete
- This is great information. Thanks so much. I am beginning to teach algebra and geometry to a 13-year-old and yet I still get so much more out of him by using manipulative.
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efriedman
Jul 19, 2011 @ 1:32 am | delete
- Love the missing tooth graph. Great idea. What fun and helpful way to think about collecting and analyzing data.
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akumar46
May 20, 2011 @ 1:33 am | delete
- Math Manipulatives - Nice way to teach maths.
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ChineseKitesforKids
May 2, 2011 @ 11:29 am | delete
- I am going to feature a couple of your math learning lessons on my MATH SONGS Squidoo page. =) You've got the best stuff!
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GonnaFly
Feb 6, 2011 @ 3:42 pm | delete
- I love using manipulatives in math. This lens has been blessed by the maths angel and added to my best maths resources lens.
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jojokaya
Feb 2, 2011 @ 7:09 am | delete
- Great tips to teach maths for young children..
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grannysage Jan 24, 2011 @ 10:57 pm | delete
- I Love the Math Gnomes! When my youngest daughter was in kindergarten, she liked the manipulatives so much she took them home. I finally found them and sheepishly took them back to the teacher. Blessed and featured on Granny's FairyAngel Blessings.
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lravidlearner Jan 14, 2011 @ 10:19 pm | delete
- Wonderful ideas for manipulatives, and the photos are terrific. Blessed by a SquidAngel :)
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Teddi14
Oct 23, 2010 @ 10:51 am | delete
- I just love this lens. I love all of your lenses!!! You are so creative.
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Teddi14
Oct 23, 2010 @ 10:53 am | delete
- I also lensrolled it with my Math Fractions lens.
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marsha32
Sep 11, 2010 @ 4:31 pm | delete
- excellent as always....I'm still fighting math with Jasmine...she hates math and gets defensive when I am trying to teach it. I'm at the end of my rope with it.
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skiesgreen
Feb 1, 2010 @ 7:40 pm | delete
- This is a lovely incentive for teaching children. As my love was always maths before other subjects it was a never a struggle but for kids who find it difficult there are great ideas here. Top marks and lensrolled to and featured on Early Childhood Abilities Encouraged
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Evelyn_Saenz
Feb 1, 2010 @ 8:13 pm | delete
- Thank you, Skiesgreen, please come back and let us all know which natural math manipulative ideas your children enjoyed most.
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arncyn
Dec 21, 2009 @ 6:03 am | delete
- What a creative way to learn Math -- when I was young, my mom would teach me Math using tiny shells we found on the beach so I guess those were my manipulatives. Beautiful lens with lots of useful information. (:
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Evelyn_Saenz
Dec 21, 2009 @ 6:26 am | delete
- My mom taught me math using acorns and sticks we found in the woods. Natural Math Manipulatives can be found anywhere.
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About the Author of this Lens
Photo Credit: Leaves by bangli 1
Used under creative commons
Evelyn's Hands-On Learning Blog.
Find out what I'm doing when I'm not making math manipulatives:
Math Manipulatives
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by Evelyn_Saenz
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... more »
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Natural Math Manipulatives bring Unit Studies to Life
