MAB Blocks

One of the first things I went searching for was an electronic version of a MAB set. For those who don't know the lingo, MAB, or sometimes known as 'base ten' blocks, are little wooden 1 cm cubes, ten cubes in sticks, ten sticks in squares, and ten squares in thousand blocks. Most lower primary school classes seem to have the real sets in various pieces around the room. Sometimes you can find a hundred propping up one corner of a bookshelf!

What I thought would be really handy was an IWB resource that could be used to show the class how to model a given number more easily than crowding around the teacher on the carpet. Also, I wanted a resource that could show grouping by tens as clearly if not clearer than using the MAB blocks. I found some resources that pretty much do what I wanted at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (NLVM) from Utah State University. The ones I used are the Base Blocks, Base Blocks Addition and Base Blocks Subtraction. There are heaps (and I mean HEAPS!) of other maths resources on this website too.

So, it's not the most colourful resource out there. It's also not the newest, I suspect, but it does its job in a no-nonsense, reasonably intuitive sort of way. Simply click on the column headers to add more of the blocks, or drag blocks to the trash can at the bottom right hand side to get rid of them.

There is also a MAB subtraction and addition resource. For the subtraction resource, simply drag and drop a red block on a blue block of the same size (or a blue on a red) and they cancel each other out. Neat!

And here's the cool part -- drag a ten stick into the ones column and watch it break apart into ten separate ones!

To change ten ones into one ten in addition, just click and drag a box around ten singles (or more, and it will turn only ten of them into a stick). Same idea with ten tens turning into one hundred. Too easy!

Just a couple of extra tips and pointers:

• If you don't need the thousands or hundreds column, you can always get rid of it. Just change the column setting at the bottom right.
• For older challenge groups, you could model number systems other than base ten by changing the 'Base = 10' setting to '5' or '2'. I actually started to understand how non-base ten works by fiddling with this resource!

VELS Links

• Number Level 1 Standard "use materials to model addition and subtraction by the aggregation (grouping together) and disaggregation (moving apart) of objects. "
• Number Level 2 Standard "model the place value of the natural numbers from 0 to 1000."
• Number Progression Point 2.25 "use of place value (as the idea that ‘ten of these is one of those’) to determine the size and order of whole numbers to hundreds"
• Working Mathematically Progression Point 2.25 "use of materials and models to solve problems and explain answers"