This activity helps students develop concepts and language regarding the size and positional relationship possibilities of three circles in the plane in a qualitative manner. They use terms such as overlapping, inside, and touching as they work systematically to find all possible arrangements. The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, and ideas for extension. This activity can be a follow-up to "2 Rings" cataloged separately.

This activity gives students practice naming and using shape and color attributes to create patterned sequences. The first challenge asks students to use attribute differences to extend a sequence. A second, more open-ended challenge asks students to maximize the length of their sequences under a further constraint. An interactive applet is provided as an alternative to physical manipulatives. The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation and discussion questions.

With this flexible Flash applet students can explore a wide range of concepts, including addition and subtraction, factors and multiples, fractions, ratios, and combinations. Users place, move and rotate virtual Cuisenaire Rods on a grid which can be enlarged, reduced, moved or printed. It contains a link to page of challenges which can take advantage of this tool.

This is a lesson plan for third grade students. Students will choose one math skill or concept they learned this year and come up with a real world example of that concept. For example, finding the perimeter of their yard for a fence. They will create a three scene storyboard and then act out their storyboard. With the help of the teacher, they will film this example and later share it with the class. Students will peer review each others videos and participate in a discussion about the topic.  

In this lesson activity students create visual representations for the data presented in the book, "If the World Were a Village" by David J Smith and Shelagh Armstrong. Students are challenged to create different representations and reason why one representation may be better than another. Suggested representations are pictographs, bar graphs, and tables. The activity includes the problem, teacher notes, hints, and solution suggestions.

This problem provides an opportunity for students to form and test conjectures, and make generalizations, while exploring the effect of parity on simple whole number sums. Solvers are asked to arrange given sets of numbers in a V formation so that the sums of the numbers in each "arm" are equal. The Teachers' Notes page offers suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, ideas for extension and support, a printable record sheet (pdf) and links to two YouTube videos demonstrating use of the problem in a professional development setting (videos cataloged separately).

In this article Jenni Back details the use of manipulatives in the mathematics classroom. She describes the results of research studies and her own observations. She draws the conclusion that students need to have various tools available to them and to use them to make sense of the mathematics, not just to follow a rote procedure. Suggestions for ways to implement manipulative use are included in the article.

In this logic activity, students must determine how to represent three quantities using a fixed amount of space (Venn diagram) and objects. The goal is to represent the siblings’ ages, 5,6, and 7, using only ten plants. This resource includes teacher notes with extension suggestions and possible support options.

This assignment is great for the days the students need something to do at home on a digital learning day! 

This problem with multiple solutions is an opportunity for students to practice sorting, classifying, and organizing information. They also learn to recognize, generalize and predict patterns and develop systematic, strategic thinking. Learners create 16 unique combinations from cups and saucers in four colors and then arrange them in an array such that each row and column contains all four colors of each. The Teachers' Notes page offers suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, ideas for extension and support, and a link to a simpler activity, Teddy Town (catalogued separately).