I’m always amazed by the creativity (and resourcefulness) of teachers! Just yesterday, I read an idea from a teacher who uses dominoes to reinforce fact families. A domino really is a perfect manipulative for this math skill. A child counts each set of dots, and then he combines the sets. This gives him the three numbers of a fact family. If I were a kid, I’d get excited about fact-family practice with dominoes!
Do you use dominoes in your classroom? Please share!
Lovin’ the dots,
Diane
PS: April is Math Awareness Month! Look for plenty of math surprises this month on the blog. You can even “count on” a math book giveaway this month!
I use dominos for a variety of things in the classroom. Often in the cold weather we use them to count how many times we should jump, raise our arms etc.
When our theme was Texas Public Schools Week, I put out dominoes. We talked about cowboys, cattle, and moving westward. Cowboys were known to play dominoes after a hard day of work. Dominoes were easy to carry — didn’t take up much space. Several of my students already knew how to play dominoes, and they taught the other students. It was so neat to watch them. The students had a blast!
I use dominos to teach addition facts as well. This is a great manipulative for kindergarten students to learn the concept of addition. I also use dominos to teach more or less. I draw a line down the middle of a paper plate and write the words more on one side and less on the other side then student places the domino on the line, counts the dots on both sides and determines which set is more or less.
We use a blank domino template each morning when we are doing our morning calendar. Each day the class leader rolls dice. The number rolled goes on the top portion of the domino template. The second dye rolled is the number that goes on the bottom of the domino. Then we add the two numbers and write the total.