You can make dominoes with images for free at Tools for Educators.com

In dominoes players take a set amount of domino pieces. If we have 4 players, we'll take 8 each for example. If we have more players, we'll take less (6) . If we have less players we'll take more (10). You'll need about 50-60 domino pieces. Several copies of the same ten is OK but you might want to make 2 copies of 10 and 2 copies of a different combination of 10 and then some doubles. That will make one set for one group.

Players match the word side with the picture. So if I lay down the first domino from my hand and it has a living room picture and the word a bathroom, you (the next player) will need to put down a piece in the row that has either the word living room on one side or the picture of a bathroom on one side.

Match: word - picture | word - picture | word - picture ...

Here's a visual explanation.


If you make some cards with the same word and picture (which you should) those pieces can be played horizontally creating new rows to build on.




If you don't have a domino like either of those items, you draw a domino from the pile. Then play moves to the next player.

The goal of the game is to get rid of all of your pieces first.


For language practice, as a student plays a domino they have to use one of the words in a sentence. Or, to make it more difficult they have to use both of the words in a sentence. They have to make a question where the answer is one of the words on the domino, as another example.

If the students come up with other rules (and there are more) just let them go as long as they are learning.

I hope that helps.

Happy teaching,
Mark

Thanks Mark
these are awesome, its always good to have a different activity up your sleeve!

Do you get any sleep?

LOL

Thanks Mark for the Dominoes idea. This is even something which I can play with my adults. I'm sure they will like it!

And yes, I have already wondered as well when do you sleep?

Great addition, I think these will be useful with my younger students.

Thanks!

Hi Mark..Tkanks a lot for your help..

I've use the dominos in the class and kids loved them! thank you!!!

Hi Mark,
Thanks for explaining the game which is played by dominoes. I was totally unaware of this game. I find it interesting. Still I am a bit confused. I need to read for sometimes and I will understand it. Once I am done I will try playing it my colleagues or my family members. Let's see how it works. Anyway thanks. Cheers.

thanks a lot!

Its a awesome idea Mark. I am sure my students will like this. Thanks a lot for your help.

Wow! What a great idea.

But more than the idea, the site is amazing how it lets you make your own dominoes.

An instant bookmark for me. I will use this again and again.

Thanks!!

I'm glad the maker will be useful.

I have to say this thread has been quite surprising. The domino maker was actually the first worksheet maker I made for www.toolsforeducators.com . I just made the explanation with images after I got a few emails asking about how to play. Then, it seems to have brought it to quite a few people's attention.

I guess there's a lot of stuff out there and so many sites with so much on them, it easy to miss things.

Anyway, after everyone's had a few goes, let me know if you think the maker could be improved. I'm going to be working on a couple new worksheet makers soon, so it's good to get in there and make changes while I've got the machine open.

I've just printed a few different sets related to weather in Spanish. You don't happen to have any pics that would go along with "warm" and "cool". I would like to differentiate the phrases between those and hot and cold, but couldn't with the wonderful clip arts provided. I can't wait to use these tomorrow.

Gracias otra vez!

warm and cool ... those middle level gradient adjectives are hard to nail down. Let me think about that for a bit.

cool - fall leaves, breeze, maybe a character wearing a light coat
warm - spring day, sunshine, ...

This domino tool is great, except for the fact that more than one short sentence simply spills out of the box and therefor could not be printed.

With a shorter sentence though it is fabulous.

I put in country names and then sentences like "This country has good cheese and wine and the Eiffel Tower".

Useful in senior high school in Japan.

Thank you MES.

Matthew.

I'm glad the materials are helpful.

You can blame Kiwione for the larger font. It's his fault.

Basically, I wanted the font to be big enough that one word wouldn't look tiny, but not so big that sentences wouldn't fit. The ability to choose would be best. However, with the current coding platform, I can't do that. I'll have to redo the maker, which is a possibility but not in the near future, I'm afraid.