How Does Your Gifted-In-Math Kid Feel About Manipulatives?

[cottonmama]

:lurk5:

 

ETA: Good point... a lot of kids like them a lot for play but not for learning.... what I'm getting at is how do they feel about them as a learning tool (either for independent learning or for lessons). :-)

Edited September 8, 2011 by cottonmama

[Julie of KY]

Loved them - as in, learned lots of math from manipulatives by just playing with them, but didn't use them much for math instruction.

[Deniseibase]

She likes them, or at least did when she was little, but she's always been very visual and hands-on. But I should note that even when we used a lot of manipulatives, we rarely used them more than 'halfway' - I would get about halfway through my carefully planned lesson, and she'd move a few things around, and then she'd say, "Oh! Ok, got it." And she'd be done. It's the same now when we are solving a problem by drawing a picture or using any sort of visual, we'll get about halfway through 'building' the visual, she'll 'get it', and be ready to move on. I don't usually make her finish unless I think there is still something else that she needs to get out of it, like the first time we went through the Sieve of Eratosthenes and she thought she had gotten all there was to get out of it after she had crossed out the even numbers!! :)

[Embassy]

He loves them, but not for the intended reason. He sees creations and buildings and little worlds and wants to create them with the manipulatives. I found they were mostly a distraction for math instruction purposes.

[Dmmetler]

Tolerates them for a short period when mom insists on them, but LOVES building with them and playing with them. I bought quite a few of the "overhead" ones when ETA had their big sale because she really likes the shiny, see through bright colors for this purpose-so I figured that even if she never used the algebra tiles or pentablocks to learn math, she'd use them for artistic purposes.

[curlylocks]

My son tolerates them if I insist... ;)

[catz]

My son started homeschooling in 2nd grade, and absolutely hated them by that point. My youngest liked them when she was younger (on her own terms), but is quickly rejecting them as a young 7 year old.

[MissKNG]

My big girls likes them but doesn't need them. She usually fools around with them on her "unschooling" time. I rarely use them while actually working on math.

[boscopup]

Fun for building hotels and gun ships. Not needed and too distracting for math.

[lisamarie]

Fun for building hotels and gun ships. Not needed and too distracting for math.

 

:iagree: That's exactly what I was going to say.:lol::tongue_smilie::D Only once did we use the base ten blocks and that was to help DS understand 3 digit subtraction. Other than that, they make great houses, towers and other projects.

[8filltheheart]

Ds LOVES Zome. ;) I have no involvement. He uses it on his own (but HE finds it very educational b/c he tells me about what he attempting to design/prove/discover.)

[nov05mama]

I'd have to go with hates them and other. Other because he likes using them for other things than their intended purpose. ;)

 

Yup! This.

[serendipitous journey]

Used to like, now he hates. But he's so eager for the MUS fraction manipulatives (he saw them in a DVD lesson) that I briefly considered giving them as a birthday present :D

[Grover]

It depends on the manipulative. When he first started playing with Miquon he liked the rods for everything (even if he could already do it in his head). Now he doesn't use them for Miquon at all but I've seen him using them to measure things (hey mum, the bathroom is 20 orange and 1 yellow rod wide).

 

He is deadly keen for some 'hands on equations' equipment although I suspect that would only last a few lessons.

 

He does love his abacus though (a real one) - he's getting pretty fast on that now.

[Greenmama2]

Will sometimes play with them but hates them for actual mathematical use. If she needs an aid she prefers pictures or will sometimes tolerate an abacus.

[Scuff]

I'd have to go with hates them and other. Other because he likes using them for other things than their intended purpose. ;)

 

:iagree:

[higginszoo]

Which math gifted child are you referring to? I have 4. They run the spectrum from one who absolutely loves manipulatives, one who likes them, one who tolerates them, and one who hates them. They'll all play with them, even the teen, who wasn't a fan of using them for math when it was developmentally appropriate.

[Spy Car]

At what age?

 

At 4 Cuisenaire Rods and base-10 flats opened up the world of mathematics to my child an an amazing and concretely understandable way.

 

At 7 he rarely uses them, but we did recently use them to good effect when we wanted to explore decimals, and to do that we changed what had been a 100 value (a base-10 "flat") into 1-Unit (One), an Orange Rod (formerly 1-Ten) became 1-Tenth, and the other C Rods became Hundredths.

 

In a very short lesson decimals to the Hundreths place were contextualized.

 

We don't use them to solve problems at this stage as they are no longer develomentally necessary. But once they made a world of difference.

 

Bill

[8filltheheart]

At what age?

 

At 4 Cuisenaire Rods and base-10 flats opened up the world of mathematics to my child an an amazing and concretely understandable way.

 

At 7 he rarely uses them, but we did recently use them to good effect when we wanted to explore decimals, and to do that we changed what had been a 100 value (a base-10 "flat") into 1-Unit (One), an Orange Rod (formerly 1-Ten) became 1-Tenth, and the other C Rods became Hundredths.

 

In a very short lesson decimals to the Hundreths place were contextualized.

 

We don't use them to solve problems at this stage as they are no longer develomentally necessary. But once they made a world of difference.

 

Bill

 

Cuisenaire rods aren't the end of math manipulatives. ;) Older kids that love math really should have the opportunity to explore ideas with Zome. Or explore like http://vihart.com/

 

I think that it all depends on what you think the purpose of math manipulatives actually is. I think that there are a lot of older kids that really get into them. :D

[Spy Car]

Cuisenaire rods aren't the end of math manipulatives. ;) Older kids that love math really should have the opportunity to explore ideas with Zome. Or explore like http://vihart.com/

 

I think that it all depends on what you think the purpose of math manipulatives actually is. I think that there are a lot of older kids that really get into them. :D

 

I'll check them out, thanks.

 

I must admit today I had already pulled out a bunch of my son's old square wooden baby blocks, as I've dreamed up a bunch of questions on Area and Perimeter based on the Beast Acadmy samples. So manipulatives are still alive here ;) :D

 

Bill

[Food4Thought]

Mine is like the others - he enjoys the manipulatives for "play" but not for lessons. When it's time do math worksheets, the manipulatives are distracting. However, he has used things (and I use that word as broadly as you can imagine - juice lids, hole punch leftovers, paper scraps, beads, legos, etc) as math manipulatives since he was a tiny thing. He plays in numbers. So when he sits down to "do" math, he's all business.

[acurtis75]

She liked the mathusee blocks for learning addition facts...but not necessarily along with the lessons. Just played with them and would come to me and say..."did you know I can make 10 a lot of different ways with these blocks?" Loves to build things but doesn't necessarily like to use them with the current lessons which are on multiplication. She says both the blocks and writing down the steps for her work take too much time when she already knows the answer in her head.

[kochanyk]

Absolutely hates! The only thing I can get him to touch is Math Wrap Ups and *sometimes* money. MUS was great for us when he was 3 but ever since not a chance.

[rbk mama]

At age 4 our base ten blocks were a hit for play and for math. With these (and later along with a small whiteboard) DS very quickly learned place value and addition/subtraction with 4+ digit numbers. I wasn't using any program - we just played with the blocks when he wanted to, and he loved it. As soon as he understood how to do addition/subtraction with large numbers, though, we were done with the blocks and he wanted paper only math. So for our math-gifted kid, manipulatives were great at age 4 but not beyond. Oh we also used two different colored beads to learn about negative numbers (this was also age 4)-- again, this was a hit until he got the concept solidly enough to no longer need the beads.

[twoforjoy]

I'm not sure if my DS is gifted in math--he has much more of a natural facility with language than he does with math, although he's quite good at math--but he HATED manipulatives. He basically refused to use them, telling me they were "cheating."

[Tigger]

My DS absolutely hates math manipulatives.

 

That said, they were useful when we started multiplication and division (even if he won't admit it), because they showed exactly what we were doing in a concrete way. But he'd prefer to use them to build things, they can be very distracting, so our use of them is very limited, but I do pull them out on occasion when I see they'll be useful for what we're doing at the moment.

[Runningmom80]

I'm pretty sure I'm a moron, because the cuisinaire rods confuse me. :lol: I don't feel comfortable answering for DS when I can't even figure out how I feel about them. :D

[Crimson Wife]

My son started homeschooling in 2nd grade, and absolutely hated them by that point. My youngest liked them when she was younger (on her own terms), but is quickly rejecting them as a young 7 year old.

 

This is what I've noticed about my kids. They find them helpful in the primary years but around the time of my oldest's 7th birthday, she started groaning every time I dragged them out.

[Spy Car]

The whole purpose of manipulatives is to make mathematical co celts comprehensible in concrete ways for children who need them at that stare of development.

 

We can cheer that they don't want (or need) manipulatives to do sums when they are 7, but they can be magical at 4 or 5.

 

And even later, things come up like fractions and decimals were a quick lesson with manipulatives can cause "light-bulb moments."

 

I can't say how easy it was to teach "decimals" using a base-10 "flat" as a 1A-Unit (One) value, and using Orange C Rods as Tenths, and the other C Rods as Hundreths. It took a few minutes, concept understood.

 

I'm afraid this thread is going to mislead people. So what if 7 or 8 or 9 year olds don't like using manipulatives to do work they don't require them to do successfully? Children that get the point shouldn't be using them, and they know when they don't.

 

These are tools to be used when needed, and avoiding them because some gifted children grow out of them (or never "needed" them) is silly.

 

Bill

[boscopup]

I find it interesting that other children gifted in math don't like manipulatives. Obviously this isn't scientific research, but I still find it interesting. It seems like most kids would like them. Who wouldn't want to play with stuff instead of working through pages of problems? But in fact there are many who would prefer working through pages of problems.

 

I imagine that kids gifted in math often have abstract mathematical thinking earlier than average kids, hence they don't need the manipulatives and it slows them down, so they end up hating them.

 

I use C-rods with my 4 (almost 5) year old, and he seems to like them ok so far. I'm not sure if he needs them or not. I seriously can't understand the child's brain. My DH and I have officially diagnosed him as "weird", because that's the best way to describe him. :lol:

 

My 7 year old, OTOH, never needed the rods. He's always thought fairly abstractly about math. I suppose he used his fingers to add/subtract when he was a young 3, but beyond that, he didn't need anything concrete in order to understand it. I think that's probably fairly common in this forum. :)

 

I don't think manipulatives are bad, and I don't think people should avoid them for gifted children necessarily, but if your kid doesn't need them, I don't think you should push them either. They're a tool to bridge concrete and abstract. If the kid already works in abstract, they don't need that bridge. No big deal.

[serendipitous journey]

Who wouldn't want to play with stuff instead of working through pages of problems? But in fact there are many who would prefer working through pages of problems.

 

:001_smile: while there seem to be lots of folks here with littles who love pages of problems, Button hates pages of problems, and he hates using manipulatives to do math, too! But he's perfectly happy to _play_ with his math stuff, he just doesn't like using it to do his math work. Bill seems onto something when he says they like to do the math efficiently, and so using manipulatives seems less straightforward, but when they're small and the manipulatives are more efficient for them that may be a different story. (that was poorly phrased 'cause we have colds here and colds make me stupid. don't tell the kids I said "stupid" :001_smile:)

 

also I've found that what they like to do, and what I think I would have liked if I'd had their opportunities, are often quite different (sigh.).

[LittleIzumi]

Mine love them... for art and building. :tongue_smilie:

[Spy Car]

I find it interesting that other children gifted in math don't like manipulatives. Obviously this isn't scientific research, but I still find it interesting. It seems like most kids would like them. Who wouldn't want to play with stuff instead of working through pages of problems? But in fact there are many who would prefer working through pages of problems.

 

I bought a lot of manipulatives because they seem fun. I never had anything like it growing up and thought for sure any kid would enjoy them. My first son seriously had no interest in them. I don't know what to make of that so it's interesting to me that others have had similar experiences.

 

The problem, I think, is that in most cases we are talking about a disconnect between the age/state of intellectual development when the manipulatives are used. What may be vital at 4 (or 3, or 5) may seem superfluous at 7 (or 5, or 6).

 

Concrete manipulatives are helpful when children are in a concrete state of learning. I think many parents of accelerated children probably start in too late after the children no longer need them. This is what I think is showing up in the poll. Unfortunately I think it may lead some to the wrong conclusion, that "gifted" children don't like or need manipulatives, rather than a realization that they may have started too late.

 

Bill

[8filltheheart]

The problem, I think, is that in most cases we are talking about a disconnect between the age/state of intellectual development when the manipulatives are used. What may be vital at 4 (or 3, or 5) may seem superfluous at 7 (or 5, or 6).

 

Concrete manipulatives are helpful when children are in a concrete state of learning. I think many parents of accelerated children probably start in too late after the children no longer need them. This is what I think is showing up in the poll. Unfortunately I think it may lead some to the wrong conclusion, that "gifted" children don't like or need manipulatives, rather than a realization that they may have started too late.

 

Bill

 

I agree with the underlying premise which is that the wrong manipulatives are being introduced....... which is why I posted about Zome and Vi Hart in my original response. Cuisenaire rods are not the beginning and end of manipulatives. Here is a description from Zome (which is used by used by professionals. If you ever watch Numb3rs, Charlie has Zome in the background all the time. ;) )

 

What kinds of scientists and designers use Zometool?

Because Zometool replicates so many natural structures and can build so many different geometric designs, it is of great value for many professionals. Mathematicians use Zometool to model everything from networks in discrete mathematics, to group theory, and projection models (shadows) of theoretical 4-dimensional objects. Crystallographers, chemists and material scientists build lattices of natural crystals and quasi-crystalline materials, Buckyballs and other Fullerenes, and models of chromosome bonds and protein molecules. Engineers and computer scientists design space frames, make visual models of data bases, and numerous other uses.

Edited September 18, 2011 by 8FillTheHeart

[Spy Car]

I agree with the underlying premise which is that the wrong manipulatives are being introduced....... which is why I posted about Zome and Vi Hart in my original response. Cuisenaire rods are not the beginning and end of manipulatives. Here is a description from Zome (which is used by used by professionals. If you ever watch Numb3rs, Charlie has Zome in the background all the time. ;) )

 

I am not familiar with Numb3rs, what is it?

 

I'm glad you have brought up other learning tools for other states of intellectual development. I've never claimed C Rods were the beginning and end of manipulatives, only that what might be amazing for a 4 (or 3 or 5) year old might be burdensome to a 7 (or 6 or 8) year old.

 

We should use tools as appropriate.

 

Bill

[IsabelC]

My children aren't gifted at math, but I was as a child, so voting for me. I thought the manipulatives at school were boring and pointless, because I already knew the answers but the teacher made me count them out anyway. I don't think I actually learnt any math at school until I got to algebra.

[jennynd]

I used manipulative for ds when he was 2-3. he loves it. but it was not needed after he was in K,

My dd is 3 and now she just love it. c-rod, abacus u name it. she build stairs, trains.. i just like the fact she play it. we also use M&M and cereals candies as math manipulative for adding/sub, obviously, she LOVES it

[jennynd]

I am not familiar with Numb3rs, what is it?

 

I'm glad you have brought up other learning tools for other states of intellectual development. I've never claimed C Rods were the beginning and end of manipulatives, only that what might be amazing for a 4 (or 3 or 5) year old might be burdensome to a 7 (or 6 or 8) year old.

 

We should use tools as appropriate.

 

Bill

:iagree::iagree:

 

Professor Bill always has good insight :D

[Iucounu]

I used them briefly to illustrate a few things during, DS6's preschool year. After that, there didn't seem to be much point to using them.

[8filltheheart]

I am not familiar with Numb3rs, what is it?

 

I'm glad you have brought up other learning tools for other states of intellectual development. I've never claimed C Rods were the beginning and end of manipulatives, only that what might be amazing for a 4 (or 3 or 5) year old might be burdensome to a 7 (or 6 or 8) year old.

 

We should use tools as appropriate.

 

Bill

 

Numb3rs is an FBI tv show where Charlie Epps is one of the main characters. :001_smile: He is a math genius and uses math to solve just about everything.:tongue_smilie: :lol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Eppes

According to Eppes' father, he could multiply four-digit numbers mentally at age three and at the age of four required special teachers. In the second grade, he attempted to find a 70-digit narcissistic number in base 12 — Eppes has described himself as "quixotic" in elementary school. A prodigy, he attended Princeton University at the age of 13 after graduating from high school at the same time as his brother who is five years his senior ("Soft Target"), and took Professor Lawrence Fleinhardt's quantum physics course in his first year. They became fast friends, with Fleinhardt establishing his academic connections. Eppes published his first mathematical treatise at the age of 14 (in the American Journal of Mathematics) and graduated at the age of 16. In fact, he was the youngest person to ever write a paper of importance.

........

Eppes is a multiple Ph.D. ("Decoy Effect"), a recipient of the Milton Prize and a nominee for the Fields Medal. Following his five-year research on random matrices, Charlie worked on sequences with orthogonal symmetry. He has also provided insights for possibly solving the P vs. NP problem and published works on H-infinity Control of Non-Linear Systems and computational fluid dynamics, while his current research is in cognitive emergence theory. He has presented seminars on harmonic analysis and the zeros of random orthogonal polynomials and given lectures on group theory and Kac–Moody algebras. Eppes has taught courses on calculus, chaos theory, fluid dynamics, game theory and probability at CalSci in addition to giving guest lectures on applied probability. The lecture in which he converted the classroom into a miniature casino for analyzing probabilities is considered an "Eppes Classic". Also, Eppes has taken over Fleinhardt's computational physics class when he was asked to do so, and has given a joint lecture on circular motion and the Coriolis effect with Fleinhardt. Professor Otto Bahnoff took over Eppes' mathematical physics grad seminar on the day he got married.

Math geek ds loved it when he was about 12/13......(it isn't not little kid friendly, well, at least not at our house. ;) )

 

FWIW, my comment wasn't directed toward you nor was it meant to insinuate that you were stating that C Rods were the beginning and end of manipulatives. My comment was based on the apparent general consensus that manipulatives are for little children and C Rods are what I think of when I think of little kids manipulatives. :tongue_smilie:

Edited September 19, 2011 by 8FillTheHeart

[Spy Car]

Numb3rs is an FBI tv show where Charlie Epps is one of the main characters. :001_smile: He is a math genius and uses math to solve just about everything.:tongue_smilie: :lol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Eppes Math geek ds loved it when he was about 12/13......(it isn't not little kid friendly, well, at least not at our house. ;) )

 

Thanks. We are not really TV watchers (not to imply that you are :tongue_smilie:). Is this program still on?

 

FWIW, my comment wasn't directed toward you nor was it meant to insinuate that you were stating that C Rods were the beginning and end of manipulatives. My comment was based on the apparent general consensus that manipulatives are for little children and C Rods are what I think of when I think of little kids manipulatives. :tongue_smilie:

 

Understood. I also think of C Rods as little kid manipulatives. Great ones. Potentially magical ones. But ones that are cooler at 4 (or 3 or 5) than at 8.

 

Bill

[MBM]

:lurk5:

 

ETA: Good point... a lot of kids like them a lot for play but not for learning.... what I'm getting at is how do they feel about them as a learning tool (either for independent learning or for lessons). :-)

 

My son is a math lover, but not sure if he's gifted. Anyway, he never really cared much for manipulatives and seemed to brush them off at school.

 

Now as a teen, he loves the different Rubik's cubes and buckyballs. Do they count as manipulatives?

 

Regarding Numb3rs, I don't think it's on anymore. There is also a book called The Numbers Behind Numb3rs which my son has. I'm not sure what he thinks of it. Looks interesting.

[cottonmama]

I thought I'd jump back in (I'm the OP) and say that I really appreciate Bill's turning the conversation in this direction... because for me the point of this thread was mostly to help me decide if I should get C Rods for my 3yo or not. I'm a minimalist and don't want to add unnecessary stuff to my life. I'm still torn about buying something for such a short period of use, but I guess they will get use with my ds after dd is done with them. :)

[beaners]

I thought I'd jump back in (I'm the OP) and say that I really appreciate Bill's turning the conversation in this direction... because for me the point of this thread was mostly to help me decide if I should get C Rods for my 3yo or not. I'm a minimalist and don't want to add unnecessary stuff to my life. I'm still torn about buying something for such a short period of use, but I guess they will get use with my ds after dd is done with them. :)

 

We bought a bunch of stuff because I never wanted to use it for the lessons in the classroom, but I did want to play around and use the manipulatives to discover or rediscover relationships and properties. I think free play with manipulatives can be just as valuable as instruction, if not more so for gifted children.

[boscopup]

I thought I'd jump back in (I'm the OP) and say that I really appreciate Bill's turning the conversation in this direction... because for me the point of this thread was mostly to help me decide if I should get C Rods for my 3yo or not. I'm a minimalist and don't want to add unnecessary stuff to my life. I'm still torn about buying something for such a short period of use, but I guess they will get use with my ds after dd is done with them. :)

 

For that age, get them. They'll be fun to play with regardless. :)

 

They're not expensive either. I got the 74 pack for about $10. You can get the 155-rod bucket for about $15.

[chepyl]

He loves them, but not for the intended reason. He sees creations and buildings and little worlds and wants to create them with the manipulatives. I found they were mostly a distraction for math instruction purposes.

 

This...

 

Fun for building hotels and gun ships. Not needed and too distracting for math.

 

And this....

 

The problem, I think, is that in most cases we are talking about a disconnect between the age/state of intellectual development when the manipulatives are used. What may be vital at 4 (or 3, or 5) may seem superfluous at 7 (or 5, or 6).

 

Concrete manipulatives are helpful when children are in a concrete state of learning. I think many parents of accelerated children probably start in too late after the children no longer need them. This is what I think is showing up in the poll. Unfortunately I think it may lead some to the wrong conclusion, that "gifted" children don't like or need manipulatives, rather than a realization that they may have started too late.

 

Bill

 

At 4, if I got out the manipulatives to demo a problem my son would say "no, no, no!" And quickly give me the answer. He want to proveer he already knew it.

[Spy Car]

I thought I'd jump back in (I'm the OP) and say that I really appreciate Bill's turning the conversation in this direction... because for me the point of this thread was mostly to help me decide if I should get C Rods for my 3yo or not. I'm a minimalist and don't want to add unnecessary stuff to my life. I'm still torn about buying something for such a short period of use, but I guess they will get use with my ds after dd is done with them. :)

 

For my child thenexperience with C Rods was magical. They really helped him understand mathematical relationships. He could do equations, he could fing sums and differences, he could prove inequalities and answer questions like "how much greater" or how much less. And he gained a native language like sense of being able to re-group a number into different values.

 

At 7 he has not used C Rods to do sums in quite some time (or would I want him to). But the understandings he gained using them are deeply engrained. On rare occasion we run into reasons to pull them out. Decimals and fractions are areas where a quick lesson with rods can make a difference. They were cool when we played with the Distributive Law and how it works with multiplication.

 

I would urge a yes. No surprise :D

 

Bill

[Food4Thought]

I thought I'd jump back in (I'm the OP) and say that I really appreciate Bill's turning the conversation in this direction... because for me the point of this thread was mostly to help me decide if I should get C Rods for my 3yo or not. I'm a minimalist and don't want to add unnecessary stuff to my life. I'm still torn about buying something for such a short period of use, but I guess they will get use with my ds after dd is done with them. :)

 

In that case, my answer would be a resounding GET THEM. The mathy kid I referred to in my answer (who does not like using manipulatives *for lessons*) learned everything from manipulatives when he was 2-5 or so. My 5-yr old also still uses manipulatives exclusively - I don't have her doing math worksheets yet. I think that using objects will greatly help solidify those concepts when it comes time to sit down and work with written numbers.

[Storm Bay]

I said likes them because one of mine liked all of them for school. I have one dd who liked them for school for a while because she's very vs and liked how it looked, etc. My eldest liked them when she was in ps (K-2). She didn't need them, but it was fun for her.

[Violet Crown]

I voted "hate[d] them" for dd15, but it would be more accurate to say she was just confused by them. For her, math was always non-concrete, and attempts to use manipulatives would confuse her thinking. We did all of Miquon without the rods (did the same with second dd, though I think she might have been fine with them).

 

The only exception was a beautiful set of wooden conic sections I had acquired when she was very little. When she got to the right stage, I explained to her that a line rotated about a point in space to form a double-cone, and that when a plane intersected that cone, it formed a conic section. She couldn't quite get that in her mind, so I (at last!) brought out that lovely set I'd been waiting to show her for years. She looked at them, said "Oh, now I get it," and never needed or wanted to see them again. :glare: