Literacy manipulatives are physical objects that aid understanding of concepts or processes by allowing students to physically demonstrate and see the concept or process.
The use of manipulatives provides a way for students to learn concepts in a developmentally-appropriate, hands-on, experiential way.
Literacy manipulatives can be used to promote reading and writing skills, particularly in the early stages of literacy development for young readers.
For this activity, we used manipulatives to spell the word MERMAID.
Students were asked to name each letter in the word, trace it with their fingers, and eventually, place jewels on top!
Rote counting is just reciting the numeral names in order, “One, two, three, four, five…” But counting with one-to-one involves actually touching each object and saying the numeral name aloud, which is a much more complex skill for young children.
Activities that involve real objects that children can hold in their hands and manipulate are going to be the most effective for teaching the concept of one-to-one correspondence. One of these activities involved counting with unicorn “horns”. Using pipe cleaners as the “horn”, students slid beads while counting.
Each “horn” had a number ranging from one to ten. They were directed to slide the number of beads that matched their number. It was so exciting to see how sparkly our “horns” became!
The most important benefit of playdough is the word “play”.
When teachers introduce playdough, they usually do not have an ultimate agenda or ending outcome – the children are simply given the opportunity to play.
As part of our fairy week, we used play dough to create “gardens”, complete with glitter, flowers, and jewels!
Because this was open-ended play, students were given the opportunity to manipulate the materials however they so chose.
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