Mother Goose Time Manipulatives

So spell check doesn't like the word manipulatives.  But that's what they are.  A manipulative X lots.  Okay, so my grammar is just going down hill now.  But none the less, this year Mother Goose Time is including these awesome manipulatives.

First with our My Amazing Body theme we got large buttons.  For Weather All Around Us we got silk leaves.  Rainforest Adventure brought us monkeys and this month, for Winter Wonderland we got polar bears. 

Each of these manipulatives were used multiple times through out the month, they were used first with the Math Story Cards, which are also new this year.  They tell a story like, there were 4 polar bears on an iceberg, 2 were hungry and swam away, how many were left?

Here Lachlan is writing out 4 - 2 as he works on the problem I described above.

The next Math Story Card had each of the 2 bears left on the iceberg have 6 friends join them.  So he added the 6 friends in line with each bear and then counted them out.  I had him write the total in the middle.

We usually keep going and make up our own stories.  I have Lachlan, who is in kindergarten, write out the story as a math problem. 

We have also received shape manipulatives that don't go along with the Math Story Cards.  One month a collection of triangles, one month they were pattern blocks and this month 50 colorful cubes. 

The first couple of months I threw away the little plastic bags they came in, which I realize now was a mistake.  This month I finally figured out how to store them and bags were necessary.  So I got out some Ziploc bags to replace the ones I had thrown out. 

I have a sling book shelf with these plastic bins on the bottom.  I put each collection in a bag along with the Math Story Cards and then lined them up in the bin.

 I used a second bin for the shape manipulatives.

When we want to use a bag, I figure we can pull it out and dump the contents on this tray.  I didn't want to dump it out again since I just put them all away.  But you get the idea. 

Before we received these manipulatives I was starting to collect milk jug caps.  I threw the few I had so far in the recycling.  I was so excited today when I figured out a good way to keep these organized, stored, yet accessible.  How have you been storing your collection?