Other kinds of Math Mats!

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Other kinds of Math Mats!
By Chris

Hi,
I am a new teacher who had a professor in college who taught us to make Math Mats out of so many materials. One of my favorites was taking cardboard and covering it with a blue felt "lake" and then having bi-colored
goldfish to use as manipulatives. The way we made the fish was we took the flat, round beans (kidneys?) and spray painted one side yellow, and the other side red. We put eyes on with a fine tipped Sharpie, and made up little games.
There is so much you can do with these. You can also use beans to make little watermelons, ladybugs, frogs, turtles, and probably alot more.

The kids think they're great!
One math mat I made was a felt "Worm." His body was made with yellow felt circles with Velcro squares on them. The purpose of this mat was to identify patterns and size, etc...so I bought a bucket of buttons from a craft supply store, and put Velcro on them as well. The children needed to make his "body" out of buttons following rules like smallest to biggest, color spectrum, big, small, big, small, texture, the list is endless.
You can have so much fun with Math Mats--especially if you let your imagination run wild!
I wanted to pass this on to you because it was so valuable to me. I hope it helps you.