Virtual Manipulatives 2 - Peg Puzzle and Towers of Henoi

After the experience of trying to solve these puzzles in class and feeling frustrated I was a little concerned about sharing these with my fourth graders. Since we had just received our laptops in our classroom and we had a little extra time after a lesson I decided to show them both puzzles on the interactive board. I was surprised at the fact that some of them had already seen the peg puzzle: "I play this at Cracker Barrel!" was the response of one of the boys in my class. They were very excited to be given the opportunity to try both puzzles. I left a group by the interactive board and the rest of the students went onto the laptops. They spent about 15 minutes totally engaged. They were excited and some were experiences frustration. When I spoke to those frustrated students and told them how I had difficulty in my class solving them it seemed to ease their frustration and they got back to it. It was interesting to see which students could solve the puzzles and which ones had the difficulty. The next day I had a few students come in and tell me how they showed their parents the puzzles and how they could solve them when their parents had a hard time. This was the confidence boost some of them needed. This is definitely a site that we will continue to use throughout the year in my class.