Educational Insights Math Balance Review
This post may contain affiliate links, view our disclosure policy for details.
“But MOM….Math is SO BOOOORING!” Educational Insights has this fabulous and very simple Number Balance to help kids learn math in a hands-on way!
My husband, a 2nd grade teacher, has been eyeing this balance for quite some time now so we were thrilled to have the chance to review it! And I have to say that it has certainly met our expectations! It comes completely apart and stores nicely in a long skinny box. Above you can see the balance set up with the blue weights stored on the bottom. You’ll also see the small white tabs on the balance beneath the numbers – these help calibrate the scale once it is set up. It is quite clever and very simple to do! I had it set up in less than 2 minutes!
There are 20 plastic weights included.
It’s just as simple as it looks. All of the weights are the same, and you want to try to make the equivalent of one side match the equivalent of the other side in order to balance it out.
When I first thought of the Number Balance I immediately thought of using it to help kids understand addition, but as I thought more about it there are a LOT more uses for this balance! You can use it for greater than & less than, subtraction, small multiplication, random math questions (are all the evens added together more, less, or equal to all of the odd numbers added together), algebraic sense and much more! This can be easily used in tutoring and homeschooling one on one, or set up as a center in a classroom.
My son personally learns by doing. In fact as he learns he purposefully chooses all the wrong things instead of the right ones….I’m guessing so that he can visually see the entire spectrum. When I first started noticing this last year I thought maybe he didn’t “get it” and I was a little impatient because I KNEW he was messing around but now I know better. He learns by visually seeing what is right and wrong. He learns by trial and error. He learns by touching and doing. This Number Balance is PERFECT for kids like him!
He LOVED sitting down and learning more about addition from his dad! He loved seeing the visual affirmation of choosing the correct answer. My husband of course also used this in his 2nd grade classroom. His students thought it was really cool that he had an actual balance that they could all use and SEE the numbers balance out. They all wished they had one for their homework to make it easier and more fun to see if they had the right answers! It really encouraged the students to have a stronger desire to do their math work which is not an easy task! He couldn’t keep their hands off of it. My husband really liked that it came apart easily and stored in a small long box so that it didn’t take up a lot of room in his classroom. Overall – we both highly recommend it! For $22.99 from Educational Insights it is worth every penny!
One of my readers will win their own Number Balance!! I know a LOT of you guys could use this!! And if you don’t win one I definitely suggest buying one! (if you have a use for it of course!!) Have a few extra bucks? Buy one and donate it to a teacher! I can assure you they will appreciate it!
pin as jacksondeb
You can actually do the same exact thing with a primary balance + counters — which most classrooms already have! I did that with my Kindergarteners to help them view the equal sign as meaning “the same as” and it REALLY helped. I have a few templates (including a balancing mat to use independently) that I can send you as a PDF if you’d like to post it.