The use of dice

Dice are extremely useful in teaching basic addition. It is a shame that they are 6 sided rather than 9 sided, and perhaps it would be better for the world if it were flooded with 9 sided dice just to help maths education. However, 6 sided dice are what people have played with for thousands of years, and I suppose that we are stuck with them and their limitations. The fact that they are not the perfect tool for teaching maths skills, does not mean that they are not a useful tool.
Dice have many good features. They have dots on them, arranged in specific patterns that allow the child to recognise a number immediately, and this, importantly, gives the child a concrete idea of what the number looks like. The figure "5", for example, is just a shape, but the arrangement of dots on a die is something that is immediately recognisable (after a bit of practice) as being a five with the added bonus that there is something concrete for the child to use to count with. Once the child has mastered the idea of the dots representing numbers, then they can rearrange the pattern of the dots in their mind's eye and combine it with other patterns of dots, and so do their sums mentally.
Puppet Maths encourages the use of dice, the recognition of patterns of dots to represent numbers, and the rearranging of these patterns within a child's immagination to accomplish addition and subtraction.