The Usk set of cards encourages interactivity in support of the number-recognition stage of child development. The cards have been designed by teachers and printed by a specialist playing-card company, in the United Kingdom. They are intended for use, a few cards at a time, by adults who are spending one-on-one time with their loved ones.
The infant age range is from about one year old—up to five years (or more).
A boxed set of Usk educational cards
There are 56 cards in the box. They illustrate the several ways of describing the ten digits used throughout the World. This set is labelled after the river Usk, in South Wales. A picture of the Usk is on the reverse of all cards, and also on the box.
The reverse of the box ~ showing river Usk in its middle reaches
Some Usk cards taken out of their box ~ Children love sorting ~ in how many ways can these be tidied?
These three cards show different ways of representing five (There is a fourth card ~ five 'random dots'
The last of the pictures, above, suggest one of the ways in whch the set of cards may be grouped. The digit five is represented, on cards, in the Hindu-Arabic (everyday, World-wide) notation, as a picture of five ordered blobs' in a grid, as five randomly spaced 'blobs', and as the word 'five'.
The printing on the Usk set of cards puts them into groups:~
The digits 0 to 9
The words zero to nine
A sequence of 1 to 9 dots on a 3x3 grid ~ which is illustrated 'empty'
One to nine dots arranged randomly (and an additional useful word)
The remaining two groups provide additional support for words related to the smaller numbers ~
Ordinals first-fifth
a further selection of appropriate words
Other sets of busy.cards are available: all are named after rivers: all have been designed as lighthearted aids, to help carers to chat with the infants in their charge. If you’d like a slightly fuller introduction to busy.cards, you might enjoy visiting our Welcome Page.
