Drag your child away from the TV and the smart phone, and play dominoes with him or her!

Why? Because it is great for their brain and mental arithmetic.

There are different levels of the game which will be appropriate for different levels of child development. The level at which Helen and I play is very demanding  – she beats me about twice as often as I beat her.

Level 1.

• Great for really young children!
• It’s called the domino effect and relates to the knock on effect of certain events in life.
• Stand the dominoes up in a line (which later can go gently around corners), spacing them so that when one falls over, it knocks the next one down and so on.

• Get you child to tip the first one and watch the domino effect!

Level 2.

• Shuffle the dominoes face down.
• Each of the 2 players turns up a domino. The highest starts.
• The highest reshuffles and draws 7 dominoes.
• The other player draws 7 dominoes without shuffling.
• The starter lays down a domino face up from their hand.

• The other player lays a domino joining up with the same number as the one on the table, playing on either end.

• Doubles are laid sideways and the players can go round corners to keep the game compact

• If a player cannot go they pick up dominoes one at a time from those face down on the table (it’s called the boneyard), until they pick one up that enables them to go. They then play that domino.
• The winner of the hand is the first one to have no dominoes.
• The winner then scores the total remaining in their opponent’s hand.
• The winner starts the next hand as above.
• First to 250 (or any other number that you decide on) wins the game.

I’ll deal with Level 3 in a later post.