Number Balance Review

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I was pleasantly surprised by how big and sturdy this toy is-from the photos I expected it to be thin plastic, but it's definitely classroom quality. Each blue weight is 10 grams and would be tough to break even if you tried. I especially liked the little calibration clips, which allow you to balance the bar precisely.

My 4 year old enjoys matching both sides and watching the bar balance; my 7 year old is figuring out how to add numbers above 10. It was fun to watch her figure out why a 1 and a 5 weren't equal to 15, and later how to do subtraction with the balance. Now we're working on equations like 3 + x = 8, and soon we'll start into double variables.

It's better to look at this as an educational tool rather than purely as a toy. As a toy it has quite a bit of appeal, but I think for most kids it would take an adult's company to see the full learning potential. If you're willing to play along with your kids this toy can really open their eyes to why math works.

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I was at a teacher training and one of the kindergarten teachers brought this balance to show us. I fell in love with it immediately, I went home that day and bought it for my 4 1/2 year old who will be entering Kindergarten in the fall. When it arrived it was easy to assemble and my daughter started playing with it right away. You can demonstrate simple math such as equals, greater than, less and addition skills. My daughter played with it regularly.

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This was cool for my child (and myself for that matter) for about 10 minutes. It was neat to see how the thing would balance with addition as opposed to equal weights. However, after the initial excitement wore off it didn't offer enough interest to make it a good manipulative. This manipulative can really slow down instructional time and in my opinion doesn't really "show" the child why math works. For our math instruction, we have found that Cuisenaire rods "show" how math works the best while the game Double Shutter to be the best tool in the world to help reinforce simple addition. I cannot recommend Double Shutter enough. We love that game for it's entertainment value and because it is highly educational.

Double Shutter

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This Number Balance is an effective, hands-on means of demonstrating (in my Kindergarten classroom) HOW/WHY both sides of an equation must be equal.

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Seems to be OK. Its not worth the money...Quality is normal...Nothing special to say that....this has a feature that very interesting..May be the idea to Balance is what the money for