I've seen so many great ideas for containing dice (random number generators) around the web and have tried a few out. I use the giant foam dice at the beginning of the year because they need to be able to touch each dot to count it, but later in the year we can use regular sized dice! (This activity and photos are from February of the past school year.) This opens up so many more possibilities to Pinterest-obsessed educators like myself.
I used some very small containers that I most likely bought at Dollar Tree and were most likely in the craft section. The lids are difficult to remove, which is a plus when a 4 year old is shaking it like her life depends on it. That reminds me- putting dice in containers adds a whole new level of motor skills to the activity. They can flail their arms back and forth with all their might, all in the name of mathematics!
Here are my random number generators in their containers. See how small those containers are?
I recommend using containers with tightly fitting lids. I also tried another type of container with less success. These are probably easier to find and come with a lot in the package, but you'd need to glue the lids closed if your students are anywhere near as vigorous in their shaking as mine chose to be. Or you could just show them how to use them more gently. We'd already gone full shake so there was no going back for us!
There are infinite possibilities for how to use the dice, but here was our first activity which just so happens to be a math journal activity. I know a lot of folks are encouraged to use math journals in the early grades and a lot of those folks aren't sure how to fill those pages. In my classroom the answer is to fill them very simply. Teaching children to record their observations and data starts small but is a great advantage to them and their knowledge of math.
This activity was done in small groups with me. Some groups worked on drawing the dots then writing the numeral that went with that quantity of dots, while others rolled dice with the numerals and drew that many dots. Both of these end up with the same things written down, numbers and dots. I didn't show the children how to record their answers first, I simply said to record their numbers and dots in their journals. It was interesting to me to see how the children decided to draw.
That's really it. After introducing this activity with all my small groups I put several dice from my inappropriately large collection in the math center where children were free to repeat the activity on their own. It was a hit! The thing I enjoyed most about this activity was that it was a perfect set up for future games involving dice and recording data. Plus everyone loved it, so it was a win for all!
