Dice Wars: A simple & fun math game for kids
This simple and fun math game is a great way to help preschoolers (and older kids, too!) practice counting, addition, and other basic math skills while competing to win the “dice wars.”
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My five-year-old has been a big fan of playing games for over a year now. He goes through phases where he wants to play the same game over and over, until I have to hide it somewhere to save my sanity (just kidding, I would never do that…maybe).
Lately his obsession has been with alphabet go fish, which he got for Christmas. It’s a great little game really, or at least it was the first 200 times we played it. But last week I just couldn’t handle it anymore. So, I created a new game that I hoped he would like enough to give me a break from going fishing for a few days at least.
What I came up with was (thankfully) a huge success. Little Man not only loved it, but I realized that it was a great way for him to practice a lot of the math skills we’ve been focusing on recently.
It all started with the game Tenzi, which we got for Christmas last year. Little Man loves playing “the dice” game where each player has ten dice and tries to get all of them to be the same number before the other players can do so.
Side note: Tenzi is a great game! It’s simple enough that a three-year-old can play, but entertaining for adults, too. There are a bunch of different ways to play to make it more or less complex for older or younger players. I highly recommend it.
Anywho, we play Tenzi pretty regularly, and sometimes when we’re done with the official game, we’ll just play around with the dice in different ways. Last week, I came up with the idea of playing “war” (you know the old card game), but with dice. I explained it like tug-of-war to Little Man, and we had a great time. We played it several times and have tweaked the rules a bit as we’ve gone along to make it extra fun.
We use our Tenzi dice to play, but you could steal dice out of other board games you have, or buy one of these big bags of dice that can be used for all sorts of games and activities.
Wanna learn to play? Read the directions below!
How to Play Dice Wars
What We’re Learning:
- number identification
- counting
- addition & subtraction
- correlation between numbers and items being counted
- greater than/less than
Materials Needed:
- 2-4 dice (we use our Tenzi game but here is a more budget-friendly option)
- 10 small counters (we used pebbles, but you could use pennies, buttons, Goldfish crackers, etc.)
Directions:
- Each player starts with 2 dice and 5 rocks (or other counters).
- The objective of the game is to capture all of the other player’s rocks.
- On the count of three, both players roll their dice. Each player adds up the sum of his/her two dice, and whoever has a higher number gets to “steal” a rock from the other player.
- Continue playing until one player has ALL 10 rocks. In our experience, it took 10-15 minutes for each game. If that’s too long for your child’s attention span, you can set a timer and declare the winner to be the person with the most rocks when it goes off.
Variations:
- We decided that getting doubles trumps any other number, and you get to steal TWO rocks from the other player (This rule helps the game go faster, I think).
- For younger kids, you can just use one die each and focus on number identification instead of addition. For older kids, try using three!
- You could practice subtraction instead of addition skills. Subtract the smaller number from the bigger number, and the player with the larger difference gets to steal a rock from the other player.
If you play this game, let me know how it goes and whether you come up with any other fun variations. We’re always looking for more ways to play!
Want MORE fun dice games to play with your kids? Click HERE!
So easy and my kids would love this!! This is a great idea for traveling too! Perfect to entertain kids in hotel rooms.
Great idea, Leah! Hotel rooms are so hard with little kids, but you’re right that dice are perfect travel size!
I love this! I’m always looking for quick games we can take anywhere. I could definitely keep dice in my purse. Thank you!
I love this game, such a great idea to play math in a fun way!
This looks so fun and so easy! Pinning for when my daughter is a bit older!
What a great idea! Kids absolutely love dice. Once your little one is older you can use this for multiplication facts. It’s great when the materials are all familiar and the concepts get trickier.
I love the idea of using it for multiplication! Thanks!
Great game! I love games that encourage a love of math which is too often looked at as the least fun subject. I was for me, at least. Great Pics, too!
What a fun idea! My 1st grader is struggling in math so we will have to try this.
Cool game need to try this game. So many thing you can do with this. Like getting blank Dice And putting -, +, *, and / on the dice to make it random or 10 sided dice with 0 – 9. Like I said you could do so much with this. Thanks
You can also use this in simple multiplication
This is a great game thanks. We played it with addition, subtracting, and multiplication. Thanks for the idea.
I’m glad you liked it!
The other night I was thinking of printing off some fun math pages for my daughter to practice and play around with additon and subtraction but I love your idea so much better. The fact that we could make small changes as she starts to lose interest is fabulous. And I will definitely look into tenzi. Thank you.
I’m so glad you like the game!
I played this with a first-grade math RTI group and they loved it! I enjoyed all the math skills they were practicing.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
This post I had open to pin must have been the inspiration behind my impromptu use of the little spiked balls my kids got for Easter lol! We were playing with three people and had to make up a rule on the fly for when you have a winning tie. We decided the person with the low number had to give one to each person with the high number, but I think I would like to come up with a more interesting rule. ?
I’ve never played it with three people, but I love that you were able to adapt it for that!
We play a variation on your dice war game that we call brother beat that with my 4 and eight year old grandkids. They start by rolling to see who goes first ( roll one die the one who rolls the bigger number leads). The leader will roll two dice if its the four year old he will count the dot to find how many he rolled then lets say eight for example he would then say brother beat eight ! The other child will then roll the dice and try to roll a higher number if the older boy who is eight he has to add the number of the two dice like for example 5 + 4 is 9 and then I ask them to figure out who won by asking is nine bigger than eight? If they say yes I tell them aww he beat your eight he gets a point or if the number if smaller Ill say sorry you didn’t beat that ( the leader gets the point). The leader then rolls again and the game continues until first one to make 25 points wins. Biggest difference in our game is who ever rolls the bigger starting dice is always the one the other tries to beat and their roll sets the number to be beat. The boys love telling each other to beat whatever number..
That sounds so fun! Thanks for sharing this variation!
Definitely going to try this with the kids I take care of. Maybe pair them off, because I have a wide range of levels. My daughter is going into 4th grade. Then I take care of cousins that are going into 1st, 3rd and 7th. So it’s sometimes difficult to find a math game that all can play and stay interested.
I’m going to play this game with my little guy but play using tally marks instead of rocks since that is a skill we are currently working on. Thanks for the idea!! =o)
We play building a Lego tower using dice. We have 1die each, and add to our tower the number thrown. It can be fun, and is also open to lots of variations.🤣
Ps thanks for the game.😊
I love this idea. Thatnks for sharing!
This is a great game for my Summer Camp kids. I’m very happy to find your story.