Multiplication AREA Dice Roll Game

Have you been over to Teach Beside Me? Karyn always has amazing ideas and this one is no exception. I give her total credit and am thankful that she, like so many other bloggers I follow, shares her educational activities online.

This game requires little to no prep. What you need is a piece of graph paper (I have some large scale paper available for free download here), two dice, and two markers in different colors.

Because I want to reuse the game, I laminated my graph paper and used fine-tip dry-erase markers.

Player 1 gives the dice a shake and using the numbers rolled, colors in the blocks on the graph paper, figuring out the area and multiplication problem. For example, if Player 1 rolls a 2 and a 3 then they color in an area 2 squares by 3 squares, and solve the multiplication problem by saying aloud, "6 is the area."

Player 2 does the same, and play continues to alternate between players.

When a player rolls but can no longer make the shape because there isn't enough free space on the page, count the colored areas up to see which player has the most. They're the winner!

This game is a great way to review multiplication problems for tables 1-6 and to introduce the difference between perimeter and area.