Numberblocks review

A+ for the number blocks, but the show sucks

The Numberblocks show is noisy. It is busy. It is excessively colorful. It is so fast-paced that even my brain struggles to keep up. I do not like it. But my kids do!

It is the kind of show that parents may choose for their kids if they want to put them in front of a screen and comfort themselves with the belief that they’ll at least learn something. However, I’d be very surprised if my kids picked up anything from the show. There simply is way too much going on, and everything that is going on is going on way too quickly. The Numberblocks show I do not recommend.

Unless! You also purchase the toy block set to accompany it, and you use the show not as a babysitter but as an educational aide. The show as a gateway to developing enthusiasm for the corresponding activity presented in the set. Is it a necessary gateway? No. Would my already overstimulated brain prefer if we just avoided the show altogether, watched Playschool¹ instead, and got on with the math activity without it? You guessed correctly. But that isn’t an option now that my kids know about it. Thankfully the episodes are only 5 minutes.

The blocks themselves are useful enough that it’s worth enduring an overwhelmed mental state for 5 minutes. They’re like a better version of the Cuisenaire Rods, but without the chic Montessori wooden aesthetic. I prefer them because they are more intuitive: you start with individual blocks and then you connect them together to make the desired total.

With these blocks alone, there’s so much potential. Demonstrating how numbers are formed, comparing and sorting numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, odds and evens. The tactile quality is also great. A+.

The block set also comes with a long list of activities to gradually build a foundational understanding of maths. Per the above paragraph - if it were just you, your kid, and the blocks alone in the wilderness, you would do just great teaching them number stuff. I believe in you. The activities, though, help you to not have to think so much, and are matched with specific episodes and narratives that are meant to make the concepts more approachable for kids. With a small amount of additional effort, you could use the activities without the show and just ham up the narrative component if you felt necessary. Or fine, you could just watch the show.²

Our eldest went through the Numberblocks program, and I’ve recently started it with our 3 year old. After only a couple of activities she was already mimicking her learning in play, and showing her toy how 4 + 2 adds to make 6. Those blocks, I tell you, they are intuitive!

I wrote a previous post about the Tiny Polka Dot game. Numberblocks is one-up from that, in that it feels a bit more of a program to stick your teeth into. Definitely a bit more of an effort than pulling out a quick little card game, but you would probably finish the program pretty satisfied that they had a decent handle on things. The recommended age range is 3+ and that tracks with our experience.

1. Everyone not living in Australia: you must get onto this show at once. It is my favorite babysitter, for reasons I will outline in another post.

2. But you cannot even slow the damn thing down. By god please just be careful out there.