Her approach seems nicely aligned with the new framework. For instance, that document argues that "many activities should involve concrete experience so that students develop a sense of what numbers mean and how they are related before they are asked to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them" (CSDE, 1985, p. 8). And it adds, a few pages further on, that "Concrete materials provide a way for students to connect their own understandings about real objects and their own experiences to mathematical concepts. They gain direct experience with the underlying principles of each concept" (p. 15).