Not only were they shaped and textured to be neatly and easily countable without distraction, their consistent colour created a strong image--so much so that when I was a kid I couldn't help but think of my math lessons whenever mom decided to include thawed peas and carrot cubes with dinner. Furthermore, the ones cubes were exactly a centimetre, so they were useful for teaching the metric system too.
When we learned about Montessori materials in ECE, they showed us how simple materials were designed to introduce students to gradually more complex mathematical concepts. Since I have seen these cubes in classrooms around ontario, I think it would be interesting to see how these cubes could be used to communicate more mathematically complex concepts to an audience already familiar with the materials.
For example, the idea of holding a 'million cube' or 'billion cube' sounds like an enticing novelty, or using these cubes to show how much the United States spends on defense annually might be an interesting excercise. What might alternative number systems like binary or hexidecimal look like as
3D plastic objects? Obviously our system, which follows a 'X, ten X, one hundred X' fits into cubes well, but might there be a system better suited to another three dimensional shape? Would it be possible to have a number system best suited to a cube?
Being able to experiment with visual, physical objects to represent number systems opens the door to all kinds of numerical experimentation and learning, and the possibilities for teaching and communication certainly open up as well. Well-designed teaching materials open the content up to the possibility of play, and play is where the best learning happens.
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