Problem Statement

The problem that I am having in my classroom is when I pass out manipulatives for my students to use during math, they tend to play and build things with them, instead of using them for their purpose at the time. My students are 5 and 6 year old kindergartners in an urban school.  The students come from low income families, a lot of which are single parent homes. Parents are working quite often and do not always interact with their child during the school week. Students tend to have more play time than instructional time before coming to my classroom. Students also are not given a lot of play time throughout the day do to administration requirements. The root cause of the problem is that students are use to knowing toys as toys, and not that they can be used for instructional purposes at times. I also see a problem with the fact that the school administration expects the students to sit all day, while children still need to move and play throughout the day. I see it as a problem with not allowing students to have free time to move and play with the items that we have, but I also feel that the students should be able to understand the difference between play time and doing math. I would like to see my students be able to pull math manipulatives out and use them to the advantage of math, instead of building cars and planes out of them.