Summer Learning with Dominoes
It’s Summertime and I want a break from school as much as my kids do. But since we’ve had such an unstructured or should I say inconsistent year for us that we are still going to do school throughout the Summer. That being said, I’m trying to keep it fun and quick but above all effective. We’ll probably do school just a couple mornings a week, and workout it around day camp, VBS and family visits! One of the materials that my kids enjoy using time and time again is dominoes, I don’t know what draws them to it, but all 3 of them like to use them, so we’re keeping them on the shelf and using them in as many ways as we can!
Dominoes 6 Ways
We have a set of Mexican Dominoes and then some random dominoes I purchased at the Thrift store, but then happened to all have the colorful dots so we’re able to use them for color work.
Color Work
Matching Colors (2 year old)
Color identification (2 year old)
Saying color names in Spanish (everyone)
Number Identification
Recognize number of dots without counting, our dominoes have 0 through 12. (5,8 year old)
Skip counting and seeing the sequences i.e. 4 rows of 3 equals 12. (5,8 year old)
Greater than Less than, Equal to work. Give children the symbols (<, >, =) on small sheets of paper (5 year old)
Balance work
We’ve probably all see a video of someone building a chain reaction sequence with dominoes, my kids love doing that, and my toddler loves destroying the big kids dominoes. If you can actually find a peaceful corner of the house this is a fun activity. This work helps children develop focus, spatial awareness and curates an eye for designing patterns.
Addition
Mental math adding the dots. You can remove the dominoes that contain dots that require your child to do dynamic math, i.e. 9+9=18. (5,8 year old)
Invite children to write out the equations on a sheet of paper. (5,8 year old)
Subtraction
Children will need to understand greater and less than before then can do this work. This is work is great for memorization work or it’s fun for refresher work.
Multiplication
For children that are ready these Mexican dominoes are perfect for multiplication because the dots go all the way to 12.
Fractions
Use dominoes can be used to write fractions as well, which is a great activity for my 8 year old. He can use the dominoes to write the fractions and then say the fraction out loud.
He can also use the same domino and by flipping it upside down he has an improper fraction which he can write and then rewrite as a mixed number, which of course involves division.
The dominoes can also be used to find equivalent fractions, which is a great hunt for big kids who need to move around and need a challenge.
Adding fractions is another great activity, do you see how the dominoes just keep working for you!!! They are just amazing.
I don’t remember how to multiply fractions but I think we can use the dominoes for that as well!
*You can use the dominoes for division, but if your child is new to division and is not working with remainders, then you will need to sort your numbers so that all of your quotients are whole numbers.
Ok, well I hope encourages you to try out dominoes this Summer or anytime of year, I’m sure they will be a success in your household just as they are in mine.