In this article, the author relates how she designed a math activity she called Beads to use in conjunction with their school's 100th day celebration. Beads has provided her kindergarten class with many opportunities to practice a variety of math skills - counting, patterning, sorting, comparing, making sets, predicting, identifying numerals,…

The child's attention, how this attention is reasoned about, and how attention works as a surface for pedagogical intervention are central to understanding modern schooling. This article examines attention as an object of knowledge related to the organization and management of individuals. I address what we might learn about attention by studying…

Some questions about the relevance of the philosophy of mathematics to mathematics teaching and to early mathematics learning are discussed. Books by Lakatos, Davis and Hersh, and Kitcher are referred to extensively, with comments on a variety of instructional practices. (MNS)

There are numerous teaching suggestions to offer for guiding pupils to achieve more optimally in mathematics. There is, however, a problem involved in writing about the implementation of selected teaching suggestions: there needs to be a readiness of learning prior to implementing any teaching suggestion. If pupils cannot benefit from the teaching…

Technology education at the elementary level involves hands-on, appropriate activities to introduce children to tools and to enhance their personal growth, creativity, and understanding of the world. Manipulation of materials can make abstract mathematical concepts concrete. (SK)

Presents an activity for weaving polyhedron shapes out of paper strips. (MVL)

Discusses the value of building blocks for young children and describes developmental changes in their symbolic representation of space. Implications for activities to promote spatial representation are drawn. (AS)

Maintains that early childhood teachers should provide young children with creative, stimulating, and manipulative (hands-on) experiences rather than workbook pages in early mathematics programs. Presents reasons and corresponding counterpositions for using workbooks and suggests sample activities which teachers can use to make mathematics more…

Defines virtual manipulatives and stresses their advantages for classroom use. Presents examples on the Internet and discusses current and potential use of virtual manipulatives. (KHR)

The author of EC 606 784 describes the background of her research, noting her experience with the "TOUCH MATH" manipulative materials to help students with mild disabilities acquire math facts and computational skills. (DB)

Reasons for using manipulative materials in mathematics instruction are discussed: motivation, stimulation to think mathematically, and introduction of big ideas in mathematics. (MNS)

Teachers can use unit blocks as tools for directed learning activities, or blocks can be reserved for children's discovery learning experiences. To use unit blocks for discovery learning, children need adequate, protected space and sufficient, uninterrupted time. Given opportunities for free play with unit blocks, children progress through seven…

Discusses students' inability to make the connection between manipulative materials and pencil-and-paper calculations in mathematics instruction. Outlines the development of mathematical ideas through the concrete, representational, and abstract phases of instruction. An annotated bibliography listing teacher resources for representational-level…

Advocates the use of classification activities in the elementary school curriculum as a means of developing thinking skills in children. Critical preclassification skills, classification activities (including simple and multiple classification), and classification tasks and materials are discussed. (Author/RH)

Explores the interaction of gender, sex-typed toys, and the construction of the mathematical topic of fractions as it is taught in schools. (MKR)