I started teaching in the middle of October so my students already knew some concepts like addition. But I had to come up with fun ways to review and making it fun so here we go through a fun way to practicing addition with dominos and paper flowers!
For this all you need is construction paper, scissors, one or two dice, and a set of dominos.
I first had my students draw flowers on their construction paper with 7 round petals (I helped if they needed it) and then had them cut out the flowers. I try to incorporate as much cutting in our activities because as I’ve quickly learned, practicing motor skills is a thing! For any parents reading this, you might think that’s obvious, my imagine me, a non parent learning all these things about sensory lessons and motor skill practice. I feel like I’ve suddenly entered a new world of knowledge! HEY, this great training for motherhood.
OK, BACK TO THIS ACTIVITY. After they finished cutting out the flowers, I had them each randomly place a domino on each flower.
After they line up a domino per petal, they each take turns rolling the dice. Depending on how advance your kids are on addition you can using one or two dice for this. I used 2 dice so they can double up on practicing addition. With the two dice, they had to gather the sum on the dice and then add up each domino to see if any of the dominos’ sums added up to that sum. (i.e. if the dice had a 2 and a 6, the sum is 8. Then they had to find if any single domino had a sum of 8).
If they found a domino that had that matching sum, they take the domino off the flower. Whoever removes all dominos first wins the game!
To make the game go by a little faster, you can have the kids take time at the beginning to calculate each domino’s sum and write it in pencil not the flower. That way they can easily see if they have a matching sum or not.
What do you think?