Math Manipulatives Teaching Resources

Explore printable and virtual math manipulatives created by teachers to make your math teaching journey a little bit easier this school year!

Are you looking to foster a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts and emphasize hands-on learning? Our teacher team has you covered!

From handy multiplication charts to printable protractors, this collection of teaching resources is stocked with everything you need to provide concrete experiences for your students that will complement the abstract mathematical ideas you're tackling each day.

Curious about getting the most out of the math manipulatives in this collection? Read on for a primer from our teacher team, including a look at our best tips for storing all those manipulatives!

What Are Manipulatives in Math?

Yes, we know it sounds obvious to many, but we had to start somewhere!

A math manipulative is a concrete object that a learner can use to explore a mathematical concept in a hands-on way. Students literally manipulate these objects with their hands — hence the name!

These informal measurement rulers are a fun math manipulative that help kids better understand the concept of measuring length. 

Why Are Manipulatives Important in Math?

Wondering if you really need to add even more things to your classroom that are going to take up space? Well ... yes ... manipulatives are important for your students to use, whether they're working in math centers, guided math groups or doing individual tasks.

Let's face it — if you had the choice between doing math worksheets all day or getting to be more hands on, which would you choose? Worksheets certainly have their place in math education (it's why our teacher team creates engaging and interesting worksheets in the first place), but we can trace the use of manipulatives in math education back throughout history to the work of various educational theorists and mathematicians.

And for good reason!

Manipulatives make learning math more fun for kids, and these handy tools also give kids a way to bring these abstract concepts into the physical realm.

A Look at the History of Math Manipulatives

Friedrich Froebel — the German educator best known for developing the concept of kindergarten in the early 19th century — was one of the earliest advocates of what we call manipulatives today.

Froebel believed kids should be encouraged to learn through play and exploration, using objects and materials to develop their understanding of mathematical and spatial concepts.

In the mid-20th century, researchers like Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner added themselves to the list of education experts advocating the use of concrete manipulatives in mathematics education. They both argued that young learners should progress from concrete experiences to abstract thinking, with manipulatives providing a bridge between the two.

Today, using math manipulatives is widely supported and integrated into elementary school classrooms as a way to provide kids with a means for hands-on learning and a way to support a diversity of learners.

Manipulatives cater to visual, tactile, and kinesthetic learners, with makes them a perfect way them to engage with math in ways that suit their individual preferences.

Teacher Tips for Storing Math Manipulatives in the Classroom

Base 10 blocks. Counters. Tangrams. Dice. We could go on and on because there are a LOT of different kinds of manipulatives for math.

So how do you keep track of all of them without chaos ensuing in the classroom? Here are some of our teacher team's tips for keeping it all organized.

1. Use pencil boxes or pencil pouches to store your base 10 blocks.
2. Pull out zipper bags to store different manipulatives — the different sizes of the bags can be used for different types, such as a snack-sized bag for your artificial coins.
3. Create individual manipulative bins for each student with the child's name labeled on their bin and a lid to keep it all tightly inside.
4. Purchase a rolling cart with small shelves already built in! This makes it easy to separate the manipulatives into their own sections, and the cart can be rolled out when it's time for kids to grab their fraction strips or those clock templates.