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advantages of being cheap,
portable and educational too! You can start playing dice with
children as young as 2 ½, as long as you are sure that they are
past the stage of putting things into their mouths. And you will
find that all ages up to grandparents are happy to join in.
I offer below three particularly quick and easy games, all of
which can be played with children from about the age of 4 up.
All you need are pencil and paper and dice - a maximum of 7,
which you can probably find in existing game boxes around the
house.
Beat That!
You will need between two to seven dice, depending on the age
of the players. Roll the dice and put them in order to make the
highest number possible. If you roll a 4 and a 6, for example,
your best answer would be 64. Using three dice, a roll of 3, 5
and 2 should give you 532, and so on. Write down your answer,
pass the dice, and challenge the next player to "Beat That!"
Play in rounds and assign a winner to each round. For a change,
try making the smallest number possible! This is a great game
for reinforcing the concept of place value.
Run for it!
You will need six dice for this game. Roll the dice and look
for runs (sequences) starting with 1 (so 1, 1-2, 1-2-3 and so
on). Each die that is part of a run scores five points. There
can be more than one run in each roll. For example, say you
rolled the following combination: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5 and 5. You
would score 5 points for the first 1. You would then score 15
points for the sequence of 1, 2 and 3, for a total of 20 points
for that roll. The first player to reach 100 points is the
winner.
Going to Boston
Use three dice. Roll all three and keep the highest. Roll the
remaining dice and again set aside the highest. Roll the last
die, and add up your total. Write down your score. Play a
number of rounds and then either total your points to find the
winner, or simply count how many rounds were won by each
player.
About The Author: Lindsay Small is the author of Dice Games for
Little Kids and Dice Games for Big Kids, available
at
http://www.ActivityVillage.co.uk/dice_games.htm . She is also
the creator and editor of Activity Village - providing the
ultimate one-stop resource for parents and teachers looking to
educate and entertain their kids.
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