Describes the use of unit blocks with young children in early childhood education (ECE) settings to expand all areas of the curriculum. Discusses the origin of blocks in ECE programs, presents developmental stages of block play, describes children's building styles, and makes recommendations for getting started in block play for children of…

Describes a project to develop a lending library to support and extend the elementary mathematics curriculum with the goals of implementing the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) connections standards; enhancing parental involvement in mathematics learning; encouraging active, hands-on approaches to mathematics at home; and…

Identifies ways for children to learn about shapes through hands-on activities. Offers activities specifically for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children. (DLH)

Young children do science exploration and observation every day in their play. They spontaneously engage in parts of the scientific inquiry process--wondering, asking a question, planning how to answer the question, documenting their work, thinking about what happened, and sharing their results with others. Conducting an entire experiment is…

This elementary activity follows the 5-E Learning Cycle as described by Bybee et al. (1989) and integrates literature from Dr. Seuss. Students observe and identify characteristics of several slime substances and must make comparisons to determine which one most closely resembles the slime substance described by Dr. Seuss. To maximize this…

The authors discuss mass as one of the three fundamental measurements (the others being length and time), noting that estimation of mass is little taught and assessed in primary schools. This article briefly explores the reasons for this in terms of culture, practice, and the difficulty of assessing estimation of mass. An activity using the…

This study examined the outcomes of a competing activities intervention to decrease skin picking exhibited by a 9-year-old student with comorbid diagnoses. Results of an ABCBAB design revealed that the use of student-selected manipulatives resulted in reduced skin picking. (Contains 1 figure.)

Classical physics has a long history of using demonstrations and experiments to develop ideas in introductory courses. The purpose of this exploration is to examine the effectiveness of a desk-top activity for helping students develop abstract reasoning. In the pilot exploration, students in three laboratory sections of a single physics course…

"Progress in Mathematics[C] 2006" is a new core curriculum for students in kindergarten through grade 6. "Progress in Mathematics[C] 2006" differs substantively from "Progress in Mathematics[C] 2000" in both content and assessment material. "Progress in Mathematics[C] 2006" uses a sequence of systematic…

The number of school age children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) has increased over the past decade to 10-20% of the elementary school population and is expected to continue to grow. The need to understand these children and effectively teach them is obvious. This paper examines the research literature to determine the best and most current…

In these two companion papers, a learning activity is introduced that teaches students how mathematics works through the visual aid of picture grids. The picture grids are composed of 60 different acrylic stained-glass window overlays. Each fractional part is represented by a different color: fifths are green, quarters are yellow, etc. The square…

The research question used for this study was Can elementary classroom teachers identify "familiar" science manipulatives as well as the availability of manipulatives and percentage of time they are used in their classroom? Questions were also asked to determine factors that influence manipulative use, science units that are appropriate…

This set of 13 activities, adapted from "Mathmatters: Developing Computational Skills with Developmental Activity Sequences (by Randall Souviney, Tamara Keyser, and Alan Sarver) was designed to help teachers using the Indigenous Mathematics Project materials (in Papua New Guinea) understand the basic processes involved in computation with…

Two students (aged 10) and a teacher described their exploratory approach to problems involved in sliding blocks games. (SD)

Various ways to investigate square shapes are suggested. Ways are explored to color and cut squares, arrange them in pentominoes, cut them in half, and arrange six of them that can be folded into a box. (KM)