Making the Most of Your Math Manipulatives: Colored Tiles

Making the Most of Your Math Manipulatives: Colored Tiles

Pattern Blocks, Unifix Cubes, Colored Tiles...3 things you will find in most primary classrooms. (or in a storage closet close by! :)) This year I am trying to revisit some of the materials that we find in most classrooms and develop activities to use them! When I am cleaning up the classroom and I have to blow the dust off of a manipulative, that lets me know that I am not getting the most from that resource! Michele and I sat down and planned a few activities to cover each of the math standards using colored tiles.  Here are a few of those activities.

Counting

Frame It! is a fun game! To make the game, we picked some clip art, and put squares around the edge of the picture to create a frame. Laminate the frames. To play the game: invite the children to use two colors to make a pattern frame around the picture. Then, they sort and count each color. If you want to use a recording sheet, invite the children to count the tiles and write the numerals by each color.  (You could also have them compare the numerals!)

Data

To practice collecting and analyzing data, use the fun activity! To make the spinner, slip a brad through a paper clip.  Insert the paper clip into the laminated cardstock spinner. To play the game, invite the children to spin the spinner. Each time the spinner lands on a color, the children place a tile that color onto their graph. When one of the colors reaches the top of the graph, stop! On the recording page, the children draw their graph and analyze the data.

Shapes

For this activity, we wanted the children to look at various shapes in the environment. We went through our photographs and found pictures of shapes in the environment. Laminate. To play, the children use colored tiles to cover the shape. If you want the kids to use a recording page, have them count how many squares it takes to cover each photograph.

Addition/Number Combinations

This is a great game to practice number combinations! Using each child's target number, invite them to count that many tiles to make a design.  They will want to limit the tiles to 2 different colors. If you want to use a recording page, invite the children to use paper squares to copy their design. Now write the number combination.  Then, they think of another way to make a combination for that number.

Subtraction

To practice subtraction you can play this fun game.  To make the game, you will need various design cards, each with a different number of tiles (6-10).  Invite the children to select a card and build the design. Now, roll a dice. Subtract the number of tiles indicated on the dice from the design. To record the equation, the children glue the colored tiles in their book to make the design. Then, using a crayon or pencil, cross of the number indicated by the dice. Write the equation.

Compose & Decompose Numbers

Here is a way to practice composing and decomposing numbers 11-19. Make a spinner with two different colors of tiles. Invite the children to spin the spinner. Which ever color it lands on, they add that color of tile  their double tens frame. They keep spinning until one of the tens frame is full. In this photo, green was full first. Then, the children record their answer by coloring the tens fames to match theirs and recording the numeral.  (Typo in example:  It should say Decomposing Number! Thankfully Michele caught it before we published our unit!) 

 

All of these ideas are from our Making the Most of Your Math Manipulatives Unit 3: Colored Tiles.