There is a growing awareness of the need for skills involved in handling and thinking about three dimensions. The importance of developing these skills is the purpose of this pack. This pack includes sets of basic solids, or blocks, made of foam. There are 7 different shapes: squares, rectangles (two sizes), cubes, wedges, L-shapes, and S-shapes. The foam shapes are made in red, blue green, and yellow; and there are enough to work with 4 or 5 people at once. There’s also a CD which contains PDF files of the teacher’s guide, Build-Up Books 1-5, Wedges 1-2, and Dotty Paper. You can print the pages as you need them. Students will use the DIME solids to work through the series of “Build-Up” books. Each exercise requires the student to make a 3-D shape from a given diagram. Exercises become progressively more difficult, but when they’re done with that, you to make your own patterns and 3-D shapes out of the Dotty Paper. The designs in this set can be a lot of fun, but they’ll really make you think. ~ Donna