Workshop Wednesday: Math Manipulatives

Today, I'm linking up to Workshop Wednesday from Ideas by Jivey. It's my first time linking up with anyone (a few weeks ago I didn't know what a linky was), so hopefully I do this right.

The topic today is on math manipulatives - your favorites, how you organize them, etc.

Let me start by saying that my math manipulatives are terrible this year. I teach in a closet (albeit a very cute closet), so there's not much space for storage. Also, in our school 3rd and 4th grades are usually together. We split third and fourth grade this year, but as I'm the newcomer, the third grade teacher kept all the manipulatives from her room and I had none.

I've slowly been building a collection, but mostly I just borrow some from her when I need them. Here's a sad picture of what my little manipulatives area looks like (with a few things obviously out of place).

One of my favorite things to use is the fraction tiles. I've used fraction circles and fraction cubes, but these are my favorite of the fraction things. I find them much easier to line up to find equivalent fractions than the circles. They really help provide a good visual representation of fractions for those students who really need it.

Also, they're easy to store even though they don't fit in my cute pink baskets.

My only complaint is that they don't have ninths, which are convenient when doing equivalent fractions.

Don't forget to visit Jivey's blog to read about many other math manipulative favorites!