During the holiday season you may find that you family is traveling a lot either by car or by plane.  This time can be put to good use by continuing your child’s learning.  An easy way to incorporate practicing math skills while on the road would be to use dice.  They are small and easily transportable and great for a wide variety of math games for kids of all ages.

Setup – Dice & Game Boards (day 1)

The first thing you will want to do is get a set of dice and place them inside of a small storage container.  This will allow your child to “roll” the dice, but not have to worry about where they may end up if they were not contained.  Here is a photo example.  This is great for on the road, but would also be great at home.

Most of the dice games will have “game boards” that go along with them.  You can typically print these out online or create a simple game board using a word processing or design program.  You can even create your own games based on your own family traditions.  To make the game boards more durable, it is a good idea to laminate them.  You don’t have to have any expensive equipment to laminate.  All you need is an old pillow case (or spare piece of fabric), iron, and laminating sheets (or wax paper).  Here is a video to learn how.  This will make your game boards last.

If you need to write on the game boards, you will want to use a vis-à-vis pen or a dry erase marker.  You will also want to have hand wipes available to erase the board after your game.  This allows you to get many uses of just one copy of a game board.