tenblocks

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The basic idea of TenBlocks is:

• choose a multiplication problem in the right-hand grid, and then,
• fill in blocks of ten in the left hand grid.

There are two types of blocks you can fill in: 2 times 5, which you do by dragging out a rectangle in the required position with the mouse, and 3 times 3 with an extra 1, which you do by dragging out a 3 times 4 rectangle. To delete a rectangle that you have placed, click on it to select it, and then press delete or backspace, or click on the "Remove Block" button. When you have filled in as many blocks of ten as possible, i.e. there are less than ten squares not filled in, you have finished that problem (as shown by a change of colour), and you can select the next one to do. Keep going until you have done them all.

How to Get the Most out of this Program

TenBlocks can be used and enjoyed by any child that is old enough to use a mouse. However very young children will need the help of a grownup or older child to show them what it is that they have to do, and perhaps give hints on some of the trickier multiplication problems. (You can make suggestions as to how many "fat" and "thin" blocks might be needed for a given problem.) Don't worry too much if they don't understand what multiplication is or how the problems relate to their times tables, just let them enjoy the pleasure of working their way through a series of simple problems and getting them all finished. Children who are old enough to read might like to read the descriptions that change as they fill in the blocks, and if they are curious as to what those descriptions mean, then you can explain it to them.

License

TenBlocks is now open source, and the source is available from http://github.com/pdorrell/tenblocks.

    Copyright © 1999-2008 Philip Dorrell (email)

    TenBlocks is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 
    as published by the Free Software Foundation.

    TenBlocks is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program. 
    If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Warning: unfortunately the original source code was lost due to computer crashes and errors in backup scripting, so the current source has been reconstructed by decompilation, and some of the variable names are not very meaningful.