Homemade Game of Dominoes

How to Make It

- Using powerpoint is the easiest as it has the funtions I need to draw shapes, customise the colours, insert photos.

- Photos can be obtained from professional photography catalogue websites like http://www.corbis.com/, http://www.fotosearch.com/. I specifically choose photos with a white background, where possible, as it looks "clean" and more professional. He seems to be more interested when I use such photos.

- For my son who's still young, I just used 4 different pictures. Ensure that you have 2 sets of all the combinations from that 4 pictures as it'll make it much easier to play with a young child.

- Print, cut and paste unto cardboard/art card. You can instead use plastic/paper corrugated material for a chunkier feel for very young kids or kids whose fine motor skills are more challenged.

Variations for Playing It

- For younger kids, you may neeed to customise the rules of the game. Instead of turning over a domino piece and then finding that there isnt a matching picture (which may greatly discourage him), you can deliberately choose a domino piece that has one matching picture & have the child match & place it side by side.

- Themes that can be used: colours, numbers, alphabets, ocean animals, farm animals etc. There really is no end to the possible variations. Start with a theme that interests the child e.g. the theme vehicles could have cards with the pictures of a digger, dump truck, bus and train. When he gets the idea of the game, introduce other sets which have themes you target.

- For encouraging speech/as part of speech therapy activity, what I did was to ask him which side he'd like the next piece to join up to. Then have him verbally request for a piece that has that photo. E.g. "Mama, I want a card with a photo of the man kicking". Since we're currently practising the "c/k" sound & it's still hard for him to say such a long sentence, I just have him say "kicking" or "walking" or "cooking" etc.

Benefits of the Dominoes Game

- reinforce vocabulary of new themes introduced in other activities

- turn taking

- visual discrimination

- reinforce concepts introduced in other activities e.g. counting (counting the dots) or numbers (matching roman numerals) or colours

- fine motor

- hand eye coordination

- as a speech therapy game

Why I Made It
- Last year, I came across a version of printable dominoes for young kids on one of the toddler activities websites. It had the traditional dots on the face of it except that it's much larger and colour coded. We played it to reinforce counting & colour recognition.

- This time round, I made it as part of speech therapy homework to encourage practising the middle "k" sound (see earlier post: http://humbledmum-myjourney.blogspot.com/2009/09/speech-therapy-homework.html)

Want a copy?

I'll gladly share the set photographed above with those who want it (saves you time) - just drop me an email. (My email is in my profile)