Visit any educational shop (on or off-line) and you will be greeted by a plethora of plastic money, counters, number lines, games etc. There is no doubt that these considerably enhance the learning experience of children. Handling tangible materials is of enormous help to youngsters in grasping mathematical concepts.
However, you don’t need to spend any money on interesting resources. With a little effort, it is possible to find cost-free materials all around you. Try any of the following ideas:
Catalogues and Brochures
Many shops, such as Argos and Tesco in the U.K., have extensive free catalogues. Like it or not, these are full of things that children are interested in. Ask each store for a class set of brochures. If you explain to the store manager why you want to use twenty or more catalogues, s/he will probably be glad of the free publicity and be happy to supply you with as many copies as you need.
These catalogues can be used to consolidate concepts such as cardinal numbers, price difference, halving and doubling. For example:
- Find the most expensive toy on page fifteen.
- Which is cheaper – the guitar or keyboard?
- What does Buy One Get One Free mean?
Beads, Plastic Bricks, Dried Pasta etc.
Use any small items that are lying around the house to support basic calculations in class. Try any of the following activities:
- Write a sum on the board (e.g. 5 + 7). In groups, the children must build a tower of Lego bricks using that many bricks (in this case 12).
- Put some beads (or any small items) in a bowl. Let the children estimate how many there are before counting out the total as a class. It is a great exercise in how wrong human perception can be!
- Try this easier version of the above task. Put four or five different kinds of dried pasta shapes in a bowl (macaroni, pasta twists, spaghetti, etc). The children guess how many varieties of pasta there are in the bowl. Give a time limit if this exercise proves too easy.
Containers
Save and wash used bottles, jars and food containers. The possibilities for their use are endless. Here are some suggestions to make the most of these resources:
- Hold up a bottle so that any volume markers are hidden. Invite estimates as to how much the bottle holds. Fill it and pour into a measuring jug to check.
- Lay out a variety of containers. As a class, put them in order of how much they hold. This activity can be done using markers on each container or by pure deduction.
- Put a one-litre bottle next to a box that held one kilogram of its product. Discuss the difference between them – ask the class if one litre is the same as one kilogram?
The beauty of being creative with materials that are lying around is that you will soon start to generate other ideas of your own.
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