- Have specific students in charge of distributing your manipulatives.  Teach them how to move around the room to ensure everyone gets what they need. If there is no set pattern to how they are to go, you may be surprised at how long it takes for them to backtrack, look around, give someone two, forget about an entire table, etc.

-  Make a manipulative rule #1: Don’t touch the manips until the teacher says gives the signal.

-   Make a manipulative rule #2: When the teacher says hands off, it’s hands off immediately.  Anyone who can’t follow either rule has their manips taken away.

- Practice using vs. playing with manips.   When doing place value, my kids always want to make pretty designs or stack up the amount of base-ten blocks they are supposed to be showing.  I tell them their job is to show the number as quickly as possible and then either raise their hand or wait quietly (depending on the lesson).  Constantly re-arranging manips counts as playing with them when the student is obviously not paying attention, and that is grounds for having the manips taken away.  At the beginning of the year, I let the students play with the manips before using them in a lesson, and throughout the year when we have time, I try to let those students who worked hard and used their materials the right way have a few minutes to play with them after the lesson. 

- INSIST on the kids’ FULL attention when you are teaching- you do it any other time, so don’t be tempted to let them get away with it just because they’re using manips!  The ones who play with the manips while you are reviewing the answers are always the ones who say they don’t understand when it comes time to do independent work.  I tell my kids that if they’re playing while I’m teaching, I won’t help them during independent work- I will focus my attention on the kids who want to learn and are trying hard.  For most kids, they only have to learn this lesson once, if at all.

-Try to give each child his or her own set of manipulatives rather than have the kids share.  Borrow from co-workers, scrounge around in the supply closets, make them yourself- whatever you have to do.  When kids share manips, they have to talk.  It’s already hard enough to get them to focus with manips out- add talking and playing and your lesson has gone done the drain.  That doesn’t mean the kids are working by themselves all the time: for example, if you are comparing numbers, have the kids pair up and each make a different number with manips.  This is done silently; on your signal, they show the number to their partner and compare.  This is far less distracting than if they had to argue over who was going to use which piece from a shared bag.

- Have manipulatives already counted out in baggies. This is a lot of prep work but only needs to be done once until you change grade levels or schools.  The manipulative passers have an easy job and you can be sure everyone has the same thing.  In most cases it does not take longer than 2 minutes to get an entire set of manips distributed to the my class.  If your school has purchased individual manipulative kits for each student (as the ones in South Florida have), you are blessed!  The kids still need structure, though. I have each kit labeled with a number, to correspond with the number assigned to each student (#1-25 or whatever).  My math helpers pass out the kits (or call out the numbers and the kids go get them). The kits must stay unopened until everyone has theirs and is sitting silently. I then tell them which manips to take out, demonstrating how to do so (carefully taking off the lid, lifting out and showing the correct materials, and gently snapping the lid back on), then I give the signal for them to do the same.  After everyone has done that and hands are folded, I demonstrate what to do next and the lesson continues.  When it's time to clean up, they have until a 30 second timer goes off to have all pieces back in their kits correctly.  They love the idea of a race!

- Make your own manipulatives so they are customized to your teaching style, students, and available materials.  Some teachers buy those little shape erasers from the Oriental Trading catalog or the dollar store or even use candy.  I make mine to save money.   When teaching division, I noticed my kids had a hard time keeping their groups of manips separate- it would just look like a big pile of chip manipulatives.  I used the die-cutter to make little Scottie dogs (the school mascot at that school) on bright construction paper and laminated them.  I had a practicum teacher do a lot of these for me- a parent volunteer could, too.  I put ten in a baggie and the kids had something concrete to put their chips on (we called the chips 'bones' for the activity) in order to separate the groups (“Take 10 bones and divide them among 5 Scotty dogs.  How many bones does each dog get?”).  If I have time this year, I’m going to make little paper bones to use instead of the chips.