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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 21 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 44 found the following review helpful:
 Mixed review Nov 12, 2007
By TA Mom
The upside:
If you're looking to get your kids excited about math, this works. My girls loved the dinosaurs and the Action cards sent them into giggles.
If you're looking to get your kids to understand the different place values in a multi-digit number, this works, i.e. within a half hour of play, my 6-year olds were able to read 5,425 as five thousand, four hundred and twenty five. Before we started the game they could not.
The downside:
There are errors in the instructions. The colors/place values described do not agree with the board. We found another similar error in the "Action cards". To me, it is not acceptable to have careless mistakes in a math game.
Educationally, it just doesn't make sense that 1s, 10s, 100s, and 1000s all appear as roughly equal footsteps on the board. Yes, they are marked as 1, 10, 100, and 1000s on the footprint, but moving ahead 1 step for 1 moves your dinosaur the same distance as moving forward 1 step for the 1000. It just gives you no sense of the relative values.
The board gets too crowded with even 2 players but with 4 it was very hard to keep track of your pieces (16 total on the board.)
Perhaps because I have been "conditioned" by so many other games (like Trouble or Sorry) I was used to looking for "my color" and not "my dinosaur". Every player gets 4 different colors of 1 type of dinosaur. I'm sure its something you get used to but it was yet another annoyance.
The cards that came with the game are very flimsy, barely a heavy cardstock. They do not look like they will hold up to much use.
48 of 50 found the following review helpful:
 A real winner! Dec 27, 2003
By Micole Roy
This game is great! The tiny dinos spark my 5 year-old son's imagination and enable him to have so much fun that he does not realize he is learning. Furthermore, he does not want to stop!!! He learned place value up to the thousands during our first game. After each roll of the dice the player uses all four dice to make a number and then s/he reads the number aloud (i.e. if you roll 6666 you say six thousand six hundred and sixty six). As we move our dinos around the board T.R. looks forward to our pieces landing on the same track so that we can have a "Showdown". In a "Showdown" you simply have to roll a dice and the person who gets the larger number wins. However, we move our dinos to the middle of the board and have a miniature battle. The player who rolled the larger number wins the battle. The loser is sent back home and the winner gets to move ahead. After playing the game a couple of times without using the cards - which is the simplest level of play with this game - my son asked to use the cards. So on Day 2 we began using the cards. Again he uses his imagination and does a great deal of role play as he carries out the instructions. It fills my heart with delight to see his excitement and to see that he has truly learned how to read numbers up to the thousands. (T.R. learned to read when he was 4 so he independently reads the dice and reads the cards.)
As a parent I highly recommend Dino Math Tracks because kids quickly learn a lot while having loads of fun. This game can be played at three levels, so it grows with your child.
23 of 25 found the following review helpful:
My kids love this game Sep 28, 2000
By Wesley K. Church
I was not too excited when my kids got an educational board game as a gift, but my kids took right to it and still ask to play it on a regular basis a year later. They have learned a lot, and I am buying this game as a gift for our school friends this year. My only gripe is that the numbers wore off the dice, since the kids played the game so much!
17 of 18 found the following review helpful:
Great fun! Colorful! Math skills to boot! Aug 15, 2002
By M. Leet
"creative-juices"
My child loves this game! Each person has a single type of dinosaur in four different colors. Each color represents one of the placement values; Ones, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands. The dinosaurs, as determined by roll of four dice, have to walk their color-coordinated path from start to finish. But look out! If an opponent lands on the same space, a die-rolling duel ensues, with the high-roller prevailing. This basic game is a lot of fun for young children. Then there are two decks of cards, one more advanced than the other, which enable the parameters of the game to expand with the child's developing math skills. My child and I can play on even ground - a rare trait in today's games. This comes highly recommended!
12 of 12 found the following review helpful:
 It does have value But... Nov 30, 2007
By K. Hendrix
I just purchased this game and my 6 year old son loves it. We played it for the first time today. I believe that he likes it because he was able to beat mommy. He did really well on picking up on the concept of the game. We played with the "action cards" and without the "problem solving" cards and I can see the value of the "problem solving" version once we reach that point. An example problem solving question is-- your dinosaur gallops forward 40 miles and back 20 miles each day -- how far does he get in two days?
As another reviewer mentioned, the action cards had a lot of errors. For example, yellow dinosaurs are 1's, yet one of the action cards tells you to move the yellow dinosaur 3 thousands. The blue dinosaur is actually thousands so you have to modify the cards so that the kids don't get confused. I agree that the price of the game is too much to permit such mistakes. If I had to do it all over again, I probably would only buy the game if it were a lower price (we paid $18.99).
See all 21 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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