Throughout the duration of this course, we designed many quick and simple math activities as a way to demonstrate that we are capable of supplying our students with low-cost yet quick and meaningful visual aids. Below are five examples of math activities that may be used in the classroom as simple and easy manipulatives.
Pizza Shape Sort
Ask using pre-cut shapes in various colors, give students a “pizza order” with specific toppings. One order may ask for 3 circles, 5 triangles, 1 rectangle, and 1 squares. Students will not only have to identify the shape, but practice counting them too! Other activities you may do using the pizza pie would be to add toppings according to color or number of sides, or maybe have students build their own pizza however they’d like and then ask them to describe it using math.
Lego Math Subtraction
In this activity, legos are used as a manipulative for the visual representation of the math word problem. Students would encounter this page without the answer written in to any of the boxes. They may solve the problem using whatever strategy works best for them.
Lego Math Multiplication
This activity is very similar to the one above, except now we have graduated on to multiplication word problems. A problem or challenge may be added to the end of activities such as this. For example, with this activity, we may ask children to determine if 2 trays will be enough to feed the entire class, plus the teacher and the principle!
Lego Fractions
Legos may be great manipulatives to use for Addition/Subtraction and Multiplication/Division, but they are even BETTER when used to help show children fractions! In the above activity, students are able to see how a whole number is made up of parts. This activity also begins to segway into the addition of fractions. Legos provide countless options!
Alligator Chomp
In this activity on Greater Than/Less Than/Equal To, students roll each dice, first the left, then the right. After counting the numbers on the side that is face up, they must determine if the number on the left side is greater than, less than, or equal to the number on the right. The hungry alligator always chomps on the bigger number! Students must place their greater than alligator, less than alligator, or equals sign on the space in the middle before rolling again.
This activity was very simple to differentiate. To scaffold up, students must roll TWO dice on each side, creating numbers as large as 12!
To scaffold down, simply add a fold-down number line to the top of the paper for students to use to help them determine which number is larger than the other.
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