Legos: An Excellent Math Manipulative

Dec 15, 2015 | Schertz

(Image source)

At Mathnasium, we're all about making math make sense to kids. That said, bringing out manipulatives—physical objects used as teaching tools—in appropriate situations is a fantastic way to render abstract math concepts concrete! Since it's the holidays and we've got toys on the brain, we were especially excited when we came across this article about NYC-based math teacher/blogger Alycia Zimmerman's use of Legos in her classroom!

Zimmerman's original post on the Scholastic blog has a ton of great ideas for using Legos to teach math across a broad range of grade levels. With illustrated guidelines for teaching concepts from decomposing and squaring numbers to more advanced concepts like mean, median, & mode (!), her article has some fantastic creative insights that can be implemented in the classroom as well as during study time at home. Check out how she uses Lego bricks to explain fractions in the image above!

We're definitely fans of this fun new way to math with our kids!