5 Simple Domino Math Activities for Preschool

Those dominoes you played with as a kid are the perfect toy to use in endless math activities for preschool!

Have a set of dominoes yet? If you don't, try these:

Each of these preschool math activities build foundational skills with counting, number recognition, the beginnings of adding, and subitizing.

Subitizing is a math skill where kids learn to recognize a quantity quickly by sight. So kids would see domino an instantly know that it was 5 on one side and 3 on the other. To read more about this preschool math skill, check out this subitizing post by Thoughtco.

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5 Creative Math Activities for Preschool

1. "More" with Dominoes

This math activity for preschoolers will have them adding, they just don't know it! A play on the classic card game, "War," more is based on the same principles and develops addition skills as well as knowledge of more and less.

1. Place all the dominoes face down.
2. Each player picks up 1 domino and determines the sum of both sides.
3. Which player had more? They get to keep both dominoes.
4. Was there a tie? Pick again and the person with the higher number keeps all 4 dominoes!
5. Play until all the dominoes are gone and count each player's total number.
6. You guessed it, the person with more is the winner!

2. Domino Parking Lot

Anyone else have a kid obsessed with cars? Beep Beep! We pretended each domino was a car that needed to be parked in it's parking spot. Want this hands on learning game to try with your preschooler?

Grab it below totally free!

Play based learning is all about diving into your child's interests in play to help them learn, so cars were a no brainer for us. This game helps preschoolers build foundational math skills like counting, adding, and one to one correspondence (counting one object for every number said).

1. Print out your domino parking lot.
2. Place your dominoes face up on the floor.
3. Count and add the dots on each one.
4. Park it under the correct sign.
5. Yell "Beep Beep!" when all the cars have found their correct spots.

3. Domino Exercise Class

Welcome to Domino Exercise Class! This is the perfect math activity for very active preschoolers who don't like to sit still.

1. Place all the dominoes face down in front of you.
2. Have your child choose an exercise: pushups, squats, jumping jacks, leg kicks.
3. Have them turn over a domino and do that exercise that many times.
4. Take turns picking the exercise and being the PE teacher.

4. Snack Math Activity for Preschool

Who doesn't love a good snacktivity, aka SNACK ACTIVITY, to teach math?

1. Pick a domino and determine the sum of the two sides.
2. Using snacks recreate the two addends that equal the sum. For example, in a domino with 3 and 4, put 3 snacks under the 3 and 4 under the 4.
3. Name the equation represented by the snacks and the domino. 3+4 = 7

This play based learning activity allows kids to play with food to create alternative representations of equations. In this math activity your preschooler will be increasing number sense, building knowledge of addition equations, and experiment with decomposing numbers. Who knew such a simple activity could pack in so much learning.

If you love snacktivities, you're gonna also need to check out this math activity called PUNCH MATH. Trust me, it's awesome.

5. Math "Number of the Day" Activity for Preschool

Pick a domino, any domino! Congrats, you've just picked the domino number of the day.

1. Pick the domino number of the day. The total on your domino is the number for the scavenger hunt.
2. Search your home with your preschooler, and find all the ways you can make that number!
3. Create a collection with all the different ways you've made your number of the day: drawings, fingers, writing the number, a collection of legos, toys, shoes.

By creating this counting collection you're developing your preschooler's understanding that a number can be made in so many different ways. As they learn through playing the Number of the Day, they're building number sense, decomposing numbers, and counting in lots of out of the box ways. This open ended game can be played over and over, just pick a new domino tomorrow.

So which of these preschool math activities is your favorite?