Just in case we needed more reminders that what works for one kid does NOT work for others… with Naomi Rivka, manipulatives were the thing for math. What she sees when she sees the math frogs is “MATH frogs.” They helped her concretize, see it, feel it; they were great. With a little creative thinking on my part, these little froggies have illustrated so many things – grouping for addition, arrays for multiplication, sorting by various criteria, patterns, weights, measures, division, and waaaaay more. But with Gavriel Zev, it turns out, not so much. What he sees when he sees the math frogs are the “math FROGS!!!!” With many insane exclamation marks on the end, because who wouldn’t go nuts when confronted with the sheer madness of about a million shiny colourful plastic frogs? Oh, yeah, and who cares about the math? Sure, he’ll put up with them for a minute or two, so I can regroup the same seven frogs into five-and-two or six-and-one. But only if spiderman gets to watch, and