Roll the Dice!

There is so much to learn with DICE.

If you watch children you can see that things we take for granted, we had to learn somewhere. For example most adults would recognise the dice above as “double six” and most would know that that means “twelve” and that means move your piece 12 spaces around the board. But children don’t get all that. If you watch them, and as they discover for themselves, younger children will count the “dots”. And if they don’t miss any and they don’t mistakenly count some dots twice, they will arrive at “6”. What happens next is very interesting, because younger children will then count the dots on the second dice and arrive at 6 dots on that dice they will then proceed to add the two 6’s together to get to twelve and then proceed to move their piece 12 spaces around the board. But slightly older children will count the dots on the second dice by continuing on from 6 so 6, 7, 8 … 11, 12 and arrive at 12 without needing to add two 6’s together. Note, that at this stage, children need to count the dots. It is only after some practice they come to recognise the shape of the numbers on the dice, and say that is “six” without need for counting. Even so, they will need to add the recognised number patterns to end up with the total. Other strategies begin to emerge. “Doubles” are more easily remembered combinations. Two “six’s” are soon remembered as being a total of twelve, and so on with the other doubles. Once this is established there is no need to count dots and very soon there is a further strategy – double “six” is twelve, therefore “six”& “five” must be eleven. There is so much to learn from dice and Squatter is so much more than a game.