How to play
Bundles of ten and loose ones ride past on parade floats. Read the question at the top — how many there are in total, how many tens or ones a number has, or what number a set of tens and ones makes — then tap one of the four number tiles. Every five correct answers adds a new float to the parade, and twenty completes it. A wrong tap costs one of three lives. Numbers run from 10 to 99, and as the questions get harder the bundles disappear so the child works from the numerals alone.
What your child will learn
- Develop number sense and estimation
Skills practiced
- Number sense
- Mental math
Why this age range
Tuned for grades 1–2 because tens-and-ones place value is the biggest cognitive leap of those grades. Children who arrive in grade 3 without it cannot do column addition meaningfully. The game presumes the child can already count to a hundred orally, which arrives around the start of first grade.
Curriculum standards
- CCSS.MATH.1.NBT.B.2
- CCSS.MATH.2.NBT.A.1
- CCSS.MATH.2.NBT.A.3
Notes for parents
The whole point of this game is to make the difference between "twenty-three" and "thirty-two" feel obvious. Children who can read two-digit numbers but reverse them under pressure haven't yet built the tens-and-ones picture in their heads. Place-value Parade is built around that picture. Five minutes a day for two weeks is usually enough; if your child's still confusing the columns after that, pull out actual buttons in a bowl and rebuild the concept on the kitchen table.