PITTSBURGH, March 28 (UPI) -- Board games are a good way to raise low numerical ability in children from low-income families, U.S. researchers suggest.
The study, published in the March/April Child Development, finds playing numerical board games results in improving four skills that help children understand numbers.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh found that Head Start preschoolers playing four 15-minute sessions with a board game with consecutively numbered, linearly arranged spaces showed improvement in counting, in identifying numbers, in comparing the relative sizes of numbers and in estimating the position of numbers on number lines. Children playing an identical board game using colors instead of numbers did not improve in any of the four number skills.
Study authors Geetha Ramani, now at the University of Maryland, and Robert Siegler of the Carnegie Mellon University say all the gains remained nine weeks after the experience and were comparable for African-American and Caucasian children.
"Playing numerical board games appears to be a promising -- and inexpensive -- way to improve preschoolers' numerical knowledge and to reduce discrepancies in the numerical knowledge that children from low-income and middle-income families bring to school," the study authors said in a statement.
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