How to Play

Children play in three steps:

1) Children find the box on the board whose number corresponds to the number of black dots (e.g., "3" on the board for 3 black dots). 

2) They then move rightward on the board by one space for each dot in the array of pink dots (e.g., 4 rightward moves for the problem "3 black dots plus 4 pink dots"). 

3) Finally, they mark the space on the board with a marker. 

Side 1Side 2

1) Locate 7 on the board (7 black dots)

2) Move forward 3 spaces (pink 3 - also illustrated on the back of the card with 3 pink dots)

3) Circle 10 on the board (7 + 3 = 10)

Game Board

When the whole deck is played, the players check their accuracy against an answer board with colored marks at all the correct locations for that deck, and they enter their performance on the score card. 

Dots are organized into groups of ten, and children are taught to use the tens structure both to find the first number (i.e., if the first addend contains either a circle of ten dots or two digits where the leftmost digit is 1, then the number appears on the second line of the board), and to move to the final number (i.e., if the second addend contains a circle of ten dots and three more dots or the number 13, then move up by one ten and over by three ones.  At each board and numerical range, the decks begin with problems instantiated entirely as dots (three dots plus four dots) and end with problems where the second number is instantiated as symbols (e.g., three dots + 4).