CEEPS On-Line Activity Database

Domino Grouping

Description

A simple problem-solving activity that arranges participants into groups of 2, 3, or 4.

Instructions

Hand a domino to each person.  Tell them to find a partner who has a domino that matches yours (half of their piece has the same number of dots as one half of your domino).  Often there will be some odd ones out that do not match.  You then challenge them to ensure that everyone in the group is paired.

Note: You can purchase (or filter out) different domino sets for different sized groups:

Highest number (starting with zero/blank)	Pieces
Double 3	10 pieces
4	15
5	21
6	28
7	36
8	45
9	55
10	66
11	78
12	91
13	105
14	120
15	136
16	153

You can also combine 2 or more sets for easier match-ups in larger groups.  Or you can create specific sub-groups: for instance, for a group of 20, you could use only dominoes with 0, 1, 2, or 3 dots, combined with dominoes that just have 4, 5, 6, or 7 dots.

Facilitator Notes

If there is an odd number of people, you can have a domino yourself, or you can have one group of three, as described below.

For trios, challenge then to connect up in threes, where ALL THREE dominos connect in a triangle of numbers (without reusing any halves).  (You will have to confirm ahead of time that this is possible.  Check that every number occurs an even number of times in the pieces to be handed out!)

You can also buy three-sided dominoes (called Triominoes) for groups of two, three, or four!

http://ceeps.ca/activities/Domino.htm

Contents © Copyright 2006, Andrew Welch.  Please note and credit activity Source at the top of this document.   This page was last updated 28 February, 2007