The Importance Of Math Manipulatives

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Most children are better able to learn math whenever they use manipulatives. For some reason, money seems to make the best type of math manipulative. While you cannot set coins and bills side by side, or snap them together like cubes, they still work well and in doing so they encourage abstract math thinking skills. Herein your child will learn that while a dime does not look like it is worth more than a nickel, it really is. This is actually a type of pre-algebra and advanced math problem because in these forms of math your child will have to assign values and make calculations based upon those values.

For some time now, the use of manipulatives has been promoting the use of hands-on math manipulatives. They say that these things have been designed to help children think about math concretely. In other words, children can see with their eyes how many one rods it will take to make a five rod. This is how math manipulatives have worked throughout the course of history. Sheep herders use to make a knot in their string for every ten sheep and children learned to move a bead on their abacus to the top in order to represent the number 5. This form of thinking is quite abstract and very beneficial when it comes to higher levels of math. In this same way, while a dime does not look at all like 10 pennies it is still understood that this is true.

As you can see, this is very beneficial for children. As such, you really should use rods, cubes and other such manipulatives in order to demonstrate math principles to your children. You may not want to allow them to use them to work out their math problems though. This is because some children will become quite dependent upon these manipulatives and not be able to work these math problems out without using them. However, this is not what Math U See believes and it is growing in popularity today. These children are given manipulatives to use and have successfully learned everything from basic math to algebra. For some reason this method works. The children who use this curriculum do not get stuck in the concrete. They are able to easily do abstract manipulations even without the use of their manipulatives.

Another thing that is really neat about using money as a manipulative is that even those children who struggle with numbers are able to catch on very quickly whenever those numbers have two decimal places and dollar signs. There is no kid in this world who cannot learn how to go shopping. This is especially true if this shopping is of meaning to them. In other words, if they want to go to the store to make a purchase, then they will learn really quickly how to do the math that is necessary to make this shopping trip happen. Therefore, even if you do not want to use money manipulatives for anything else, you really should use them to teach your child how to go shopping for themselves.