Geo Boards
May 26, 2021 | Felicity Greene
Recently, the children have begun exploring a new math manipulative in the classroom called geo boards.
“The pegs are hard and metal.”
There are so many benefits to using geo boards including building hand eye coordination, muscle control, developing directionality, and of course encouraging those all-important fine motor skills! When using geo boards, children manipulate rubber bands to loop around pegs to make various shapes and images.
Using the rubber bands is trickier than it may look, but it allows children to practice using their pincer grip which they need when drawing and writing. The children began their work with geo boards by taking some time to explore them. They were allowed to create whatever image they wanted. Some chose to make patterns with the different colored rubber bands…
“Green, pink, green pink. Now the other way!”
After taking some time to explore, the children began making the letters of their names on the geo boards. This was no easy task, and the children used images of letters on geo boards as a guideline that helped them understand how to manipulate the rubber bands in new ways.
“This is on four pegs and the picture has five pegs!”
After letters, the children moved on to making numbers…
After numbers, the children moved on to making pictures!
These activities have been such an engaging way for the children to not only practice important skills, but to experience a multi-sensory way to writing their names and identifying shapes and letters. The teachers are looking forward to seeing what the children will create next!
