I am always excited when I get to introduce Bixby tiles to kids. Unless it’s their first year at Bixby, they’ve been exposed to this incredible manipulative before. Yet still, every year they are in a new place to be able to experience them differently.
Last week, we began with basic questions to become familiar with the relationships of sizes (how many blues fit into three yellows?), and then moved into more challenging problems like, “Pretend that each tile is a candy bar. Ann has 8 black tiles. She eats half and gives half of what’s left to Bill, who now has three browns. This means that he had ____ blues to begin with.” As the year continues, our work with Bixby tiles will evolve and the familiar manipulative will be used to answer a wide range of problems. No matter the difficulty of the problem, they always have the option to hold the tiles in their hands to help find a solution.
