Domino is a popular game that helps develop children’s core maths skills. The numeric patterns of dominoes help to reinforce the commutative property of addition and can also be used as an opportunity to introduce children to basic multiplication and division.
Dominoes can also be used to support a range of other learning areas such as counting, matching, sorting and classifying. The physical activity required to set up a domino chain can help develop motor skills and patience, whilst the use of different colours can enhance children’s colour recognition and artistic expression. Dominoes can even be used to demonstrate principles of physics, for example the speed at which a domino is knocked over can be used as an analogy for the pulse that travels down a nerve cell, and the fact that the signal is all or nothing – it cannot be diluted as it moves along the axon.
While dominoes are most commonly played by two or more players, they can also be used to support a variety of group activities such as teamwork and problem solving. For example, by setting up a challenge and asking children to work in pairs or small groups to solve the challenge, they can learn about working together, taking turns and sharing responsibility.
One of the most famous examples of a domino challenge is Hevesh’s Domino art installations. Hevesh’s YouTube channel, Hevesh5, has more than 2 million subscribers and she has created spectacular domino setups for movies, TV shows and events, including a music launch for Katy Perry. She has worked on projects involving up to 300,000 dominoes and it can take several nail-biting minutes for her large installations to fall.
Hevesh’s extensive research and development into cutting-edge technology is a big part of the reason she has been able to do so much with her domino art. She spends time experimenting with new ways to make her sets, and then makes test versions before moving on to the larger pieces. She often films her test versions in slow motion, which allows her to correct any errors and get the best result.
Each domino is a rectangular tile with one face that is blank or has a design and the other face which has a number of dots or spots, known as pips. There are typically two sets of pips – one with black pips and the other with white – and the dominoes can be made in a wide variety of colors.
To play domino, the bones (domino tiles) are shuffled and each player draws seven dominoes. Then, the opening domino is placed onto the table, which is called ‘setting’ or “leading” and the rest of the tiles are then played to match it. If a match is not found, the turn passes to another player. A domino with a blank side can only be matched to another blank or to a domino with a specific number (e.g. a double). For this reason, it is important to play on a flat surface.