Inchimals

Kids will think these colorful blocks are toys and not the fun teaching tools that they are. It really provides the perfect way to teach and introduce kids to measurement and adding lengths. Included in the set are 12 solid and colorful wooden blocks. Each block is unique; they are all 1" wide, but each has a different height and animal featured brightly on the block. For example, the cute ladybug block is 1" high, the frog is 2" high, etc., all the way up to the huge giraffe who is 12" high. There are inch measurement markings on the sides of the blocks that the animals aren't featured on, and the length is shown in numbers and dots (like dice) on the top and bottom of the blocks. Even independently the blocks can be used for activities like sequencing, stacking, creative play, and number recognition, but a spiral-bound puzzle book is included to get even more use from the blocks. The book is write-on/wipe-off (a marker is even included) and includes 100 puzzles. Puzzles are fairly simple: A lady bug plus a rabbit equals what? A monkey minus a penguin equals what? Kids can stack the blocks on top of each other to find answers. There are also blank boxes so students can find the inch values on the blocks and write them in to finish the problems numerically as well as visually. The puzzle book gets progressively more difficult, from simple addition and subtraction to problems with multiple numbers to finding equivalent sums to finding multiple ways to create a given number. Whether kids work individually or in groups, they'll enjoy exploring length with these colorful and useful blocks. ~Rachel