How PLYT Was Born

It all started back in 2008 when my 2 children were in the early years of primary school and just beginning to learn maths and basic numeracy.  Every so often they’d come home with a puzzle or maths game designed to help them learn and my husband and I would sit and play it with them. Unfortunately, it was normally a game of chance, aimed at one particular age or ability and either the best player won or everyone had to dumb down to the lowest level. We liked the idea of learning maths through play and we loved board games but we couldn’t find a game that we could all play together where we were all challenged and yet all had the same chance of winning. 

So we ended up developing our own and a couple of laminated sheets and a few components later, PLYT was born!

When we started playing PLYT the children were 7 and 5. They both started on 2 dice with my youngest fixing one of the dice on a specific number (rotating between 2, 5 or 10) to concentrate on particular times table and the older one throwing and multiplying both dice. Ian and I also wanted a challenge so started multiplying 3 & 4 dice.

We played it regularly as we loved the competition and the more we played, the more we all improved. The children’s teachers soon noticed an improvement and asked to see the game. As it was only a piece of laminated paper we initially declined. However, a couple of years later Ian was forced to take some time off work with ill health, as he was suffering with Lyme Disease, and as a little project to keep him occupied, he made some prototypes of the game and I took them into our local schools.

The feedback we received was amazing and we had pupils and teachers asking where they could buy it. One Head teacher said “everyone in the school should have a copy of this game”. When we first designed the game, we had no idea or intention of it ever being launched. I was a stay at home mum with a background in accountancy and had no experience of the toy and game industry but as we’d all benefitted so much from playing we realised that others could too and felt compelled to try to produce the game.

PLYT was launched at the end of 2013 and although I knew it had worked for our kids, as parents, we were keen to prove that it did for others too. So an independent researcher tested PLYT with lots of families across the UK and they proved that playing PLYT at least once a week for just 6 weeks improved the maths of 7-13 year olds by 30% and adults by 22%. That was wonderful news – it really made my heart burst with pride to think that our game could help people! It was even better when leading maths consultants and National Numeracy endorsed it (it’s now recommended as one of the most effective games available on the National Numeracy Family Maths Toolkit). We’ve also had fantastic feedback from parents, teachers and children.

PLYT was originally designed, for families, to allow people of all different ages and abilities to play together so it also works well in Primary Schools from year 1 to year 6. I recently trialled the game with a year 5 class and played PLYT with them for one hour a week, on a Friday afternoon (!) for just 5 weeks. During that time they improved their maths by 19% but more importantly they ALL said that they felt more confident with numbers and they’d loved playing – not realising they were working so hard on a Friday afternoon!

I am now passionate about improving maths and giving children confidence with numbers - a vital life skill. But I also love doing it in a fun and engaging way, and getting children playing face to face games and visibly seeing their confidence grow is fantastic.

We’ve not stopped at PLYT though. We run games events and courses for schools and we’ve just launched our second game – NumBugz – a travel game with 7 different number games in 1- there’s something for everyone when you’re out and about. This has also been recommended by National Numeracy. Our third game Whotchilli is due out later this year and we have lots more ideas in the pipeline. We believe that PLYT games can really help schools, children and families build confidence with numbers.

What started as a family game has turned into a fulfilling passion and a full time job!

If you'd like any more information please don't hesitate to give me a shout or you can read more about PLYT on our website