Math Manipulatives
The earlier you get young children into the process of learning math concepts, the better. The problem with coming up with good teaching methods to introduce math ideas to the young is that math is by nature an abstract field of study. However, children do not develop their abilities to think in abstract ways until they mature. Children connect to the world in very concrete ways. So we have to give children things they can see, hear and touch to learn math if we hope to be successful. But it is a worthwhile effort because getting an early start on math will help that young student do well throughout their academic career from kindergarten to graduate school.
Using objects to illustrate mathematical principles is an outstanding teaching technique because young children love to manipulate blocks, piece of string or just about any object. That act of touching the object and moving them around uses the natural tendency of the very young to be visual and tactile learners. Amazingly, you can get much more success showing a math idea to a child using three dimensional blocks than showing the child pictures of blocks in the same configurations. Something about being able to touch the illustration and play with it captivates the minds of these young students and opens those young minds up for learning.
Set theory and the base system are formalized words for concepts you would with youngsters to learn early on. Set theory is easy to illustrate using manipulatives because you can use just about any group of objects to organize them on a table to show various sets of like items. You can lay out three sets of different colored balls, poker chips or blocks and show that while set one might have all green objects and set two has all blue objects, set three has red, blue and green objects. So the child can quickly see the need to create sets of all like objects. This very simple exercise lays the groundwork for formal set theory training later in their education.
The base system is something we teach children at an early age although we don’t call it that. The fact that the child is taught base ten because of their presence of 10 fingers lays the basic ideas of how base 10 works. You can take a pile of pennies and stack them in groups of ten and quickly illustrate how ten groups of ten make 100. You can even break one set of ten pennies into two sets of five to begin to teach fractions which leads to more complex math principles such as percentages and ratios.
Teachers and parents alike can find endless ways to use objects that are in the classroom or around the house to illustrate math ideas and engage young students in manipulating objects in mathematical ways. It is a teaching tool that is tremendously effective with young learners so it is an approach to teaching math that should not be overlooked.
