Free Printable Math Manipulatives, Hands on Activities

The best way to teach math is with real-life applications. The best way to demonstrate math concepts is with hands-on materials that are multi-sensory. These tools are called manipulatives because kids can touch and interact with them. 

They're not just paper and pencil activities or textbook lessons. Math manipulatives include real or play money (for market math), clocks for telling time, fraction bars, pattern blocks, parquetry blocks, peg boards, base ten blocks, Unifix cubes and Cuisinaire Rods. Here are websites with free printable math manipulatives for homemade materials.

Mason has a webpage with dozens of links for free printable math manipulatives, Print pattern blocks, geometry shapes, Base Ten blocks, color tiles, XY blocks and fraction bars. These tools are commonly used in preschool, kindergarten and special needs classrooms, but should be used in all grades to teach geometry, algebra and other maths.

Sparkle Box from the United Kingdom is jam-packed with free math manipulatives and printables. There are free printable PDFs of clock activities for telling time, fraction pies and bars, coins and play money for learning about money math and many free printable math games. Math games include spinners, dice, game board, pieces and accessories, all free printable cut-out activities.

Making Learning Fun has hundreds of free printable math games and manipulatives. This website is organized according to theme, such as Cats, Apples or different children's literature books. Each theme or topic has free printable math lessons, crafts, cut and paste, puzzles and more.

Teacher Resources Galore is huge clearinghouse of educational materials, including free printable math lesson plans. Each math curriculum content area has dozens of free printables listed. Search for the math content area that you are teaching to find what manipulatives you can print. Just click to open the PDF and print.

Jimmie's Collage is a neat homeschool blog with gobs of mom-teacher-made math manipulatives to print. 

Free Printable educational card games, board games

Card games and board games are excellent teaching tools. Games are interactive and hands-on and children learn many skills when they play card games. Educational card games teach kids to count, add, subtract, prioritize, plan, organize, sort, coordinate and evaluate. Card games can be created to teach content area and subject matter in lesson plans Card games help students memorize information. Here are free printable educational card games, playing cards, flashcards, dominoes and Memory games to use as lesson plans.

The Kidz Page has free printable educational card games, word games, flashcards, math games, sudoku games and lots of other educational learning games. They are brightly colored, cheerful games. Activity Village has free printable educational cards games, deck of cards for learning games, Memory games, dominoes and more. Planet Pals has a free printable animal matching deck of playing cards. You can play this game as Memory games also, finding pairs and sets.

Print Games has several cute free printable card games. Some are styled on vintage card games like Crazy 8s, Old Maid, Go Fish, and the regular deck of playing cards for solitaire, poker, rummy, etc. There are board games to print also. These make excellent family games and party games.

Mom's Minivan has a great assortment of free printable educational card games, travel and car games. There are bingo games, Battleships games, matching and Memory games, cootie catchers, connect the dot games, flashcards, decks of playing cards, dominoes and more.

DL-TK has a nice assortment of free printable educational card games, math games, matching and Memory games, dominoes, playing cards, flashcards and board games. There are free printable game tokens, playing pieces and dice.

Disney Family has gobs of free printable Disney activities, including Valentines based on Disney characters. Why not print sets of Disney valentines and make them into educational cards games, flashcards, playing cards, dominoes, matching and Memory games? Tim's Printables has free printable decks of playing cards.

For more Free Safe Kids Games visit the author's blog.

Free Printable Play Money for Math

Parents, if you want a sure-fire fun kids' activity, you can bank on play money being a hit. Elementary, kindergarten and preschool teachers use play currency, coins and bills in a variety of money math lessons. Here are free printable coins, bills and play money. Homeschool parents will want to use these free printable play currency for money math lessons also.

Printable Play Money has all denominations and styles of free printable coins, bills and play money you might ever need for your lessons. There are cut-out coin worksheets, counting coins, money math lessons, worksheets, activities and making change lessons. There are free printable sheets of pennies, dimes, nickels and quarters to cut out and use for counting and making change. Printable Play Money also has free printable bills and US currency in several denominations. Print play one dollar, five dollar, ten dollar, twenty dollar, fifty dollar and one hundred dollar bills. Some styles are replicas of US mint currency and some are obviously play money. 

Free Printable Snowflake Patterns, Lessons and Activities

 Paper snowflakes make a great educational tools for science and math lesson plans. Cutting paper snowflakes is also fun! Here are free printable snowflake patterns, templates and stencils. Children learn math skills by exploring symmetry, shapes and geometric patterns in six-sided snowflakes. Students explore art concepts by cutting snowflakes. They learn pattern, line, shape and design. Children learn about earth science by creating snowflake patterns that simulate ice crystal formations. Students improve motor skills by cutting paper snowflake patterns. They improve perceptual skills by folding paper to create the six-sided snowflake patterns.

Marcel's Kid Crafts has free printable snowflake patterns and paper snowflakes to print and color. Easy folding and cutting instructions printed on snowflake pattern. Use these patterns for ages 9 and up. First Palette has more free paper snowflake templates to print.

Paper Snowflakes has free printable snowflake stencils and templates. Directions are more complicated. You can find free printable snowflake games, puzzles and patterns on this site. These patterns work well for younger children or special needs children. They are easier and less frustrating.

While students are cutting their snowflake patterns, explain the water cycle. Here are free printable water cycle worksheets, plus snow and crystals lesson plans. Use the printable water cycle poster to teach the three states of matter, using steam, water and ice to demonstrate.

Read "Snowflake Bentley" by Jaqueline Briggs Martin. This beautifully illustrated Caldecott Medal winner, tells the story of Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley, photographer who first captured snowflakes on film and showed their unique hexagonal patterns. For a great closure to your snowflakes lessons, serve fruit juice snowcones as a classroom treat!

Free Printable Christmas, Winter Holiday Crafts and Lessons

Get ready for free Christmas printables like you've never seen before. Because The Toymaker has a sleighful of free printable Christmas paper toys, holiday activities and 3D paper crafts to make. The pictures look child-like but don't be fooled. As we've recently seen, adult coloring books are good therapy for adults and so are cut and paste paper crafts.

There's something so very comforting about paper crafts from The Toymaker. Styled in Dickensian England type graphics, these printable paper toy crafts are manna for vintage art lovers! The images look like they come straight from a Victorian toy shop. You can just imagine Bob Crachitt helping Tiny Tim make these paper crafts and Christmas paper toys. Holiday activities are easy enough for children to cut, paste and assemble.

On the Toymaker Free Toys page, you'll find many holiday activities, paper toys, and 3D paper crafts on general themes, from fairies to frogs and mice to unicorns. There are winter holiday activities for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice and Diwali.

Free Printable Math Games, fractions and decimals activities

Math is sometimes difficult to teach in hands-on lesson plans. So here are free printable math gamesto use as math worksheets and lesson plans that are enjoyable (rather than painful). These math worksheets help students with concepts that ar ehard to visualize. Much math content is abstract which means kids have to "think outside the box." with no frame of reference. These free printable math games provided that concept framing. Free lessons are perfect for homeschool families living on a budget.

Dr. Mike promises hands-on lesson plans and cool math games on his website and does he ever deliver. He's created free printable math games and free printable math worksheets on an array of subjects. There are free printable games, online games, calculator games, math worksheets and board games, magic squares, times tables and more. These challenging math games cover operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), fractions, patterns, cryptograms, number mazes, geometry, place value, magic hexagon, deductive reasoning. inductive reasoning, spatial relations, countdowns (using an Advent calendar) and others. Homeschool families, you will like the free printable 3D geometric solid models for kids to cut, fold and paste. How's that for hands-on lesson plans!