The students like using the colour tiles to make equal groupings and arrays to help them solve multiplication problems. I like that there's the pen feature that allows the students to write out their math sentences as well. 

"Maryam Mirzakhani, arguably the most important mathematician of our time, works almost entirely visually...Maryam joked to reporters that her 3 year old daughter probably thinks she is an artist."

In my research for this e-Tivity, I found this video which explains the importance of manipulatives and gives some examples of how to use them in the classroom. This quote stayed with me: "Moving away from paper and pencil learning, manipulatives allow students to demonstrate their thinking. They don't have to hold as much information in their working memory which allows them to focus on the task at hand." YES! 

In my mind, students can have fun and strengthen their understanding of money, addition, subtraction, counting, strategy and conversing playing monopoly. 

In our house, we've written sight words for our two kids on Jenga blocks. As we play, they read the word and then we make up funny sentences using the word. It's a great time and their reading has improved dramatically

I realized that Toy Theatre was already shared (my bad), so here is another manipulative site I used more so in the classroom for Base Ten Blocks and patterning blocks. This website also has brain teasers that I like to use for Number Talks. Check it out!

When in the classroom my favourite manipulatives to turn to are the base ten blocks. I feel like they can be used in so many ways (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and they are an excellent visual for regrouping. I would not know what to do if I didn't have them available to me in my classroom (haha) 
When I bought some math slides on teachers pay teachers, this person had created online base ten blocks, and I have been in heaven ever since! :) 

I did a lesson on symmetry where kids had to bring in food items from home and we checked to see how many lines of symmetry they had. A few kids did bring in noodles and it also ended up turning into an inquiry on types of noodles and how people cook them. A small math lesson turned into a writing task, a cooking demonstration, oral language etc et.

The easter eggs I used to LOVE using in Kinder and Grade 1 as they are an item the kids loved playing with and they always thought they were playing instead of learning.

I also find that if you can sue food, you will get the attention of many...

For younger students they're a great way to explore parts/whole, missing addends, and to show how equations balance. In a slightly more abstract way they can also be used for multiplication and division, but at that point I tend to lean toward base-ten blocks to model the concrete steps used to solve.

Relational rods can also be used to create artistic designs where students then add up the total value of their picture, or they can be used in variety of ways to explore spatial reasoning expectations.

It was only a few years ago that I was introduced to them (and I thought they were initially too abstract), but now I swear by them and love to use them with all divisions.

If you're ever in need of ideas on how to use them, or what games and activities you could try, e-mail me and I'd be happy to share anything I've created (or borrowed).

Mathies is still hands-down my favorite digital tool. It can't be run with Flash anymore, but can be for use on a teacher computer. 

An alternative I use is: https://mathsbot.com/manipulatives/rods The colours are different than the physical tool, but that can be changed.

One manipulative that I'm going to try for my online class, in June, is Minecraft Education Edition. In Part 1 of this course we talked a bit about it and experimented with some of the things it does. You can have each student have a Minecraft avatar and be in the same room together. There are prebuilt worlds that have different "math stations" or centres. Teachers can swoop overhead and check out what their students are doing. It looked like fun.

I told my 5s that we were going to check it out next week, and they were pretty excited. (There are a couple of experts in the class who will help me figure it out!)