For the Love of Dice

Hi blog hoppers! I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. On my blog last week, I talked about my love for magnetic letters. My other true classroom love, is dice. My husband has learnt over the years, to ignore my habit of picking up multiple packets of dice at the shops whenever I see them. I think I must have some sort of subconscious fear of being trapped in a classroom with no dice. Who knows? I see them for $1 or so a packet, and in the basket they go. 

I love storing my dice - as all my other 'little bits' - in small take-away containers. 

I love that these containers:

- are cheap (and therefore easily replaced)

- stack easily

- are easily added to my grocery cart each week

- always available 

- are not too fancy, so I don't feel guilty of quickly labelling them with a black sharpie rather than spending 4 hours printing out pretty labels

- easily transported

When I left my full-time classroom for maternity leave it was very easy to empty the classroom cupboard of all my personal possessions - stacked in these containers - pack them in the car and then re-stack them into cupboards in my garage at home - ready and waiting for when I return to a full-time classroom. 

 

For easy-to-prep dice activities in class, I like to utilise sorting trays. These trays are actually $2 snack trays from the dollar store. I put the tokens/chips in the middle and the various equipment needed around the edge. 

Another great addition to your classroom is 'quiet dice' shakers. I used dressing/sauce tubs (a brand called Decor). They nicely fit a dice or two and can be shaken without too much noise. I have made a class set and store them in a math equipment trolley. 

 

Another idea is to have baggies of around 20 chips/counters and a dice sorted and ready-to-go. The baggies are easily stored in a small, compact space and you can quickly pass them out to students for a game or activity. 

I am currently working on a resource of all my easy-to-prep dice activities. Here are 3 ideas that you can easily implement in your classroom, using just dice and counters. 

One and Six

Play with three dice. Students take turns to roll all three. They only score points if they roll a ‘one’ or ‘six’. Points can be counters or tokens. Students collect one token for each ‘one’ rolled and six tokens for each ‘six’ rolled. The player with the most tokens at the end of play may be declared the winner!

Five to Double

Students play in pairs. They take turns to roll 3 dice. The aim is to roll a double of any number. A student can have five attempts to try for a double. For each double, the student may take a scoring token or chip. The student with the most tokens at the end of play may be declared the winner.

Roll & Order

Students play in pairs. Each student has at least six dice. Students roll all six dice at once and race to put them in order. A student must order the six numbers rolled in order from least to greatest. Whoever sorts them in correct sequence first, scores one point (a chip). 

I love that dice can easily turn into a fun and meaningful classroom lesson in minutes - with minimal complicated prep. 

Thank you so much for stopping by our blog today. Have a great week!

- Mel x