ASTON, Pa.— In Jodie Murphy's kindergarten class, math lessons go beyond the basics of counting and recognizing numbers. On a recent morning, the children used plastic red and yellow dots for a ...

Concrete objects — such as toys, tiles and blocks — that students can touch and move around, called manipulatives, have been used to teach basic math skills since the 1980s. Use of manipulatives is ...

Psychologists have found that use of certain objects for counting have mixed results with preschoolers, particularly if those objects are rich in perceptual detail (bright and shiny). Concrete objects ...