Teaching Tool Tuesday - Balance Benders

Don’t tell, but my wish lists at Lakeshore Learning and Amazon are much longer than the one I have at Endless.com. Honestly, I’m a complete sucker for books and educational games, software and toys. But this past year I’ve honed my ability to discern which tools will be fun once or twice and which ones we'll use over and over . . . and I’ll be sharing our favorites with you every Tuesday.  

This is what my little guy can't get enough of these days - Balance Benders from The Critical Thinking Company. In case you haven't heard me rave about their curriculum before, we love them! Yes, love.

This book is his his favorite of the three we purchased for this year. Here's the description from the company website:

Move over Sudoku, here come Balance Benders™! You can use these books as quick, fun logic problems or as stepping stones to success in algebra. Children develop deductive thinking and pre-algebra skills as they solve balance puzzles that are more fun and addictive than Sudoku puzzles! Children must analyze each balance to identify the clues, and then synthesize the information to solve the puzzle. Try one—and then try to stop!

They're not joking about the "try to stop" part. Noah attempted to complete the entire book in one sitting last week. In fact, every book we've purchased from them, I've actually had to ration so he didn't sit down and complete it in one sitting - although these days I either just let him go to town with it or I use it as an incentive to get other work completed.  

Still not sure whether to call this math or critical thinking in our activity log, but as long as Noah keeps calling it his favorite, I don't really care!