This may not be fair, as I did not go through all the activities, but the emphasis on low level skills in most of the games tells the whole picture. Yes, playing these games beats doing endless worksheets mindlessly, but to what end? As research has shown (read Children and Number by Martin Hughes), one of the biggest problems faced by beginning learners is the transit from their concrete experience of maths to the abstract knowledge. In other words, while most children are equipped with fundamental math skills when they enter schools, they have difficulties going beyond concrete experiences.My reasons for not giving this book more stars are: 1)it fails to make connections between concrete experience and symbolic representations; 2)it overemphasizes on basic skills; 3)the games are not really fun and creative; 4)they are not really effective in improving math skills. 5 take away 4, so there you have it!