We love a good math manipulative! Children absolutely need concrete examples before they can grasp abstract math concepts, and there are many wonderful tools available for this purpose. However, if we were all to stock our home or classroom with every available math manipulative, not only would we be spendin’ those Benjamins, we’d also have an organizational crisis on our hands.
If you’ve reached your max of physical math toys you can handle but still want to make some other manipulatives available to your kids, digital manipulatives can fill the gap while providing a little novelty as well.
Math Learning Center has several free digital manipulatives available online. My favorites:
In addition to being hella fun to say, a Rekenrek, also generically referred to as a “number rack,” is a fantastic tool for modeling early addition and subtraction problems. Unlike a physical Rekenrek, the digital version allows you to add or subtract strands of ten so that you can work with larger or smaller numbers. Math Learning Center even provides a tutorial on ways to use their Rekenrek with a variety of math concepts. Check it out!
2) Number Frames