Organizing Math Manipulatives for Students

I truly believe of the more time-consuming tasks for teachers is organizing math manipulatives. And if you are working on a lesson that requires a certain amount of manipulatives, it can take a long time to count out materials for each student.

I was frustrated with all the time it took in organizing math manipulatives.

So I started storing individual math supplies for my students…and it saves SO much time!

Organizing Math Manipulatives in jars

This may sound a bit strange…but did you know that makeup jars provide the PERFECT storage for organizing math manipulatives?

The size is just the best! They are compact and can be stored in a larger bin when not in use. But they are large enough to contain all those small math manipulatives, such as…

And the best part?

You can get these jars ready ahead of time, so you won’t need to frantically count out all those little supplies just before your math lesson.

Just hand out the jars and your students are ready to use those manipulatives!

I use two different sizes of jars for our math manipulatives: 1 oz jars and 2 oz jars

Labeling the Jars

I love to use these removable labels…they are the perfect size to keep on the bottom of the jar.

I use these labels with my math students and they were very easy to remove as I switched groups throughout the year.

Looking for More Math Organization?

I have a big post on all the ways I organize our little math classroom here:

A Math Classroom Tour (2023-2024)

I also have another math organizational post here:

3 Ways to Save Time in Math Every Day

How do you like to organize your individual math manipulatives?