I love this craft idea, featured on Marthastewart.com. Making pasta skeletons would be a great manipulative activity in a science or health class.

Creative Classroom: Recycled Poker Chips

Place value disks,
available from Schoolsuppliesatoz.com

 

My case of Math Chips,
with place value card

I recently came across these foam, color-coded-by-place-value disks. How great these would be to use with my third graders, who are learning about place value, renaming, and regrouping.

This afternoon I happened to drop by the thrift store. What should I find on the board game shelf but two cases of plastic Poker chips for 69 cents each! For a fraction of the cost of commercially-produced manipulatives, I was able to easily make my own. It only took a few minutes to write the numbers on the chips, with a Sharpie marker. I also made an accompanying place value card, for stacking the chips. So far my collection of Poker *ahem, Math* chips only has three place values, but for now that is sufficient for the 3-digit regrouping problems that my third graders are currently learning. I'm excited to see how this new manipulative will help my students to better grasp the math concepts.

Fast Food Math

Check out these engaging fast-food themed math manipulatives! Give your students a good taste for math concepts such as fractions, place value, and decimals, with the Fraction Burger, Base Ten Fries, and Decimal Dog. Available from Delta Education.