Free Manipulatives

I teach at a small school in Morocco.  While there are many benefits to teaching at a small school, one of the drawbacks is that we don’t have tons and tons of manipulatives.  So, early on this year, I set out to make some simple shape counters, and I use them for everything!  All I did was print, cut and laminate, then put them into some tubs for easy access.  We started by making patterns with them, then we used them as addition and subtraction manipulatives and when looked at their properties when we did geometric shapes.  This week, we’re working on graphing, and I plan to give each group a random handful and let them graph what they receive.  With older grades, you could easily use them for multiplication and division, the list goes on and on!  Grab these quick and easy multi-purpose manipulatives from Google Docs for your classroom.