Math Toolbox

Next year, we'll be starting Kindergarten with Dragonfly.  I made this math toolbox to help us prepare for her math needs.  As a bonus, I even used a toolbox that we already owned!  The box is filled with manipulatives to make math concepts easier to grasp.  Your toolbox may have different needs depending on your curriculum, etc, but here's what we put in ours.

Cuisenaire Rods (aka C-rods) in a "small group" pack, which I'm hoping will give us enough pieces to work all the math concepts that we might ever need (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root, fractions, etc).  If not, we can buy more (wink).  I'm also planning on using the blocks for base-10 blocks, adding a 10x10cm squares for the 100 block and 10x10x10cm cubes for the 1000 blocks.  We'll have to add those later.

Plastic 3D Shapes for learning geometry.  I honestly got these out of the box and everything I had struggled to understand about geometry made sense to me instantly.  Like why the volume of a cylinder (which I still can't spell) is the area of a circle times the height.  I'm hoping to give our kids everything that I wanted to have when I was doing math (like objects they can hold in their hands).

Ticonderoga Pencils, which are supposed to be the best pencils you can buy.  I threw in one just so that we'd have it if we needed it.  And a Wood Ruler for measuring items, drawing straight lines, etc.

Disk Counters, which can be used for counting and patterning.

It makes me so happy to see this completed toolbox.  I hope this inspires you to make your own math toolbox.  What would you include?  Add your comment below.