I hope you are all having a wonderful, well deserved, summer break. Today I am here with an easy DIY for the coming school year. Integer manipulatives!
Now I know that there are several items like this on the market like two colored counters, but let's be honest. Those things are made out of paper, and they will get filthy, bent up, and lost. I wanted to find something a little sturdier, so I decided to make my own! This project is super easy, and only cost me about 7 dollars.
You will need:
- Scissors
- 2 plastic sandwich bags
- 1 paper plate
- Tile spacers
Tile spacers are found at any hardware store in the flooring section. They are typically placed in the corners of floor tiles to ensure that they are evenly spaced. They also conveniently look like little plus signs!
I bought the 500 count bag, but there were several other sizes and amounts available at my local hardware store. These cost me about 7 dollars at Lowes.
Step 1: Separate half of the tile spacers into one of the plastic sandwich bags. These will be your positive (plus sign) integer manipulatives! (Told you this was easy).
Step 2: Cut two of the edges off of the sides of the remaining tile spacers to make negative (minus sign) manipulatives. I used a paper plate to catch all of my extra little pieces.
And that's it! Put the negative signs into a sandwich bag and you're done!
I like these because they look like positive and negative signs, which I feel will help solidify the idea of integer relationships for the kiddos. Two color counters work for this as well, but by the time you get them passed out, explain which color represents which sign, and get everyone on the same page, the class is over. This simplifies the process because you can work with positive and negative signs! Plus these are made of a pretty sturdy plastic instead of paper so they should last forever!
Thanks for reading!
Ms. B
No comments:
Post a Comment