Kid Math: Domino Addition Book and Activities

Domino Addition by Lynette Long was on the shelf in the math area.  I was super excited to see it because my son had recently decided that he was interested in the dominoes that we had in the cupboard because we watched a video where they line up the dominoes and then tip over the one which makes a pattern.  We lined them up and did a small version of our own.

In this book,  they use dominoes to practice addition and make learning fun.  There is a chart of the complete set of dominoes in the beginning of the book.  Then, on each page there are the numbers zero through twelve.  The first page of the number shows you a picture of the domino that adds to the number.  The next page has dominoes in the shape of the number and the kids have to find the domino that has the total number of spots.  The answers are on the next page in case you can't find it.  Of course, my son discovered that when reading and decided to check before looking to see where the correct dominoes were.  I still think that even with the peek, they are still learning the basics but I would have like the answer key only in the back of the book so that the kids could read the book by themselves.  The last page gives you the addition equations next to the dominoes and the numbers (with the answer key along the bottom).  It is great because the kids can see not only the number but that it looks like math so they know that they are doing something that bigger kids can do.

We brought the book home the book from the library and immediately pulled out the dominoes.  I also pulled out the sheet which I use to spread on the floor whenever you are dealing with small toys.  If you have a problem chasing down the small toys like legos and other toys that your kids are interested in, spread out the sheet and ask them to keep the toys on the sheet to make sure that none of them get lost in clean up.  Of course, that doesn't work all the time but it helps clean up most of the other times.  Luckily, we didn't have that problem with the dominoes because we were ready to add!

My son went through each number and each page of the book and matched the pictures to the page and lined up the dominoes.

He decided after a few numbers that he should skip to the end and find 12 so that he could then work on the middle.  Everyone works in a different way so it is was just fun that he was adding the number on the domino to get the total.

There was only one domino that added up to 12 so he put the one that had two sixes just like the picture at the end.

When we finally finished, we had the chart in the book right on our floor.  It was neat and then we counted how many dominoes were in each row and how the number was even on both sides.

Make your own chart after reading the book and see how your kids decide to do it.  Whether they are going to use the chart or flip to each page.  Either way, they have just spent all that time counting over and over and adding all the way to 12.

 Plus, it is super neat that it makes something that looks like a city.  That was my son's observation and it did look like a neat building.  

There are tons of other activities that you can do with your kids  like making dots on the page with addition so that they have to either write the number for the answer or make the dots.  I love the bingo dots that we got at the dollar store so any excuse to use them for a fun project would be great.  I hope that you get the domino addition book and do some domino addition of your own.  It might even start a new love of dominoes!!

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