As some of you might be able to tell from my Facebook posts, I have dominoes on the brain. Early next year, I'll be putting out my new book on dominoes and I've currently been experimenting with all different kinds of domino games. The other day I got to practice some of these activities in my classroom!
My friend, Ella, came to do mathematics with me in my classroom one day after school. Ella is an amazing third grader who loves math! Since I have been working on my yet unnamed Domino book (hint, hint!) I asked Ella Bella to help me with a game idea!
I found this darling scrapbook paper while shopping in Arizona with my pal, Patti Launi. The paper has 35 addition problems. One of the games that we played, which would be easy to replicate with your class, used this paper as a game board. We placed the double six dominoes facedown. Ella picked a domino and added the pips on that domino and matched the sum of the pips to an addition problem that had the same sum!
She is such a careful thinker! She repeated the game to some lively music and did it much faster! Oh how students love the magic of games!
This would be so easy and fun to replicate with your class. All you need is a number game board-- it helps if it can be blocked out like this game board but you could also make it work with simple numbers by treating the dominoes as equations tailored for your grade level (i.e., 1 + 5, 1 x 5, etc.).
In the meantime, I'm running a contest on my Facebook through November-- I'm looking for a title for my upcoming domino book! If you have a good idea, post it on my wall. The top three entries will get a signed copy of my new book and one grand prize winner will win a Skype session with me, to discuss your classroom, your teaching, math-- whatever you want!
Happy teaching!
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