This way, math is fascinating

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As a youngster I played for hours with a fascinating game which used a set of coloured wood shapes that could be placed on a board to form a variety of geometical patterns.

Maths With a Story, from BBC Soft, uses similar tech niques to teach primary school children basic pattern recognition.

Primary school did I say? I found this tape as fascinating as my bits of wood all those years ago.

Learning to recognise shape, pattern and symmetry are important stages in the development of spatial awareness in young children.

When this learning is combined with exercises in logical thought, one has a basic teaching package which introduces young children to the first stages in design, problem-solving and basic mathematical skills.

The tape comprises four programs: Jigsaw, Pattern, Twodice and Colour.

Jigsaw allows a pupil to design a square pattern of interlocking coloured shapes.

The program then splits this pattern into nine smaller squares and shuffles them into random positions with in the large square.

The pupil then solves the puzzle by using the coordinates of the blocks to instruct the computer which block to move and where.

Pattern is a program which introduces pupils to the world of symmetry and reflection.

I found this game particularly fascinating - rather like making a doyley by folding a piece of paper, cutting shapes from it, opening it out and obtaining a symmetrically-shaped cutout pattern.

The program splits the screen into halves or quarters and when the pupil draws a pattern within one portion of the screen the program repeats the pattern as a reflection in the other portions.

Twodice is rather different from the other programs in that it is a simulated dice game in which up to four pupils can race each other up a lift.

Colour introduces pupils to that well-known mathematical classic, the map-colouring problem.

The program generates patterns and pupils then guess the minimum number of colours required for each pattern with out colour overlap.

When the number of colours have been entered, pupils colour the pattern to see if they guessed correctly.

The colour fill routine used is fast and fascinating to watch.

The unusual and attractive sound and graphics used in all the programs hold your interest and this, plus an excellent user manual and screen instructions, adds up to one of the best educational packages I have seen.

John Daddy