Sparkle Crafts

Sparkle Craft: Painted Stone Dominoes

In this week’s Martin & Sylvia: Saturdays! story, “When You Need Your Numbers”, Martin is reluctant to practice his math, protesting to Momma that he never even uses math in real life. So Momma offers him a challenge – to count the number of times in the day he has to use his math skills. Martin reluctantly agrees, not thinking much of the challenge. Pretty soon, though, Martin begins to see that there is math all around him – from telling the time on the clock to building his model houses, math is a big part of his life and he didn’t even realize it! In the end, Martin is grateful for all the math he uses and how it helps him throughout the day.

So we are going to make a fun math game of our own full of numbers and patterns – dominoes! With painted stones, older children can match up the dots, while younger kids can match up just the colors. Ultimately, it’s a game the whole family can enjoy – and it’s all thanks to math!

You Will Need

An Even Number of Smooth Stones

5-6 Acrylic Paint Colors

Paintbrush

Q-tip

ModPodge

What To Do

Make sure your stones are clean and dry. Choose any color to start with and paint half of the face of one stone. Set it aside to dry. Continue painting until all of your stones are half painted.

Make sure your stones are clean and dry. Choose any color to start with and paint half of the face of one stone. Set it aside to dry. Continue painting until all of your stones are half painted. Next, pick up your brush again to paint the other side a different color. Mix and match your colors however you’d like. Once they are complete, let them completely dry.

Now it’s time to add the dots. Traditional domino sets have up to six dots on a given side of a domino. To make it easier to fit in the needed amount of dots and play the game, you may want to limit the number of dots your dominoes have. We decided to have 1-4 dots per side of each domino.

Add the black dot using the tip of a Q-tip. For a smaller dot, take off the puffy bit of cotton at the end of the swab. Gently dab the dots on, making sure to get a good mix of all the numbers. Once you’re done, again let them dry completely. If you like, once the paint is dry you can add a layer of ModPodge to seal in the color and prevent chipping. Let the stones dry overnight.

Now it’s finally time to play your new game – and look at all the numbers to match!

Here are modified game rules for 2 young players. Divide the stones in half between the two players. Choose one player to go first (perhaps the person whose birthday is the soonest!) The first player (Player A) lays any domino in the center of the table.

The next player (Player B) must match up either the dots or the colors (choose whether you’re doing dots or colors before you begin the game) onto either end of the first domino, forming a small line. Now it is Player A’s turn again – they should now match a color/number to either of the “empty” ends of the line. Then it’s Player B’s turn again and so on. The play continues this way until all of the dominoes have been used, or until one person runs out. If you are unable to make a match, you may pass your turn.

The person who runs out of dominoes first counts up the number of dots left on his opponent’s stones. A player wins when they reach an agreed upon number of points (for example, 20 points). This game can also be played collaboratively with everyone working together to connect all the dominoes. When you’re through with the game, gather all your stones into one place – an unused bag or box – so that you can play again whenever you’d like!

Explore More & Make Connections

Do you use math in your life? You probably do more than you know. Take Momma’s challenge to see how often math comes up in your life in a given day! At the end, are you surprised by your findings?

What other games do you enjoy? Do they also involve math?

Do you ever have to do things you don’t like to do? What do you do? How do you get through it? Is it ever better than you were thinking? Tell your grown-up about it!