This colorful dice game had my 5 year-old, A, practicing adding to 10 and literally jumping out of her chair with excitement for her rainbow snack.  As a bonus, turning snack time into a game made eating healthy food all the more fun.

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Getting Ready

To make the rainbow placemat, I quickly cut a rainbow from construction paper, making each band of color about 3/4 in thick.

Next, I glued the rainbow to a 12 x 18 inch sheet of light blue construction paper, added clouds and used a black permanent marker to write the numbers 1 to 10 on each color of the rainbow.

Super fun addition game for kids! Roll a rainbow snack.

Since we’d be placing food on the play mat, I covered both sides with clear contact paper. (You could also laminate it if you have a large enough laminator.)

Finally, I grabbed a pair of dice and turned my attention on getting the edible part of the game ready.

I headed to the kitchen to prepare a snack item for each color of the rainbow.  I counted out 10 each of red raspberries, orange carrot slices, yellow banana slices, green cucumber, blue blueberries and purple grape halves.  If you have the time to prep, this is a great way to get your kiddos to eat a variety of colorful fruits and veggies, but it can also be used with snacks straight from the box like colored goldfish and fruit gummies.

Then, we were ready to place the rainbow dice game!  And eat, of course. 😉

Playing the Rainbow Snack Dice Game

I called my daughter over and explained the rules of the dice game.  She needed to fill each row of the rainbow with exactly 10 items of food by using the dice to roll the numbers of items she can place on her mat.

She could choose to add the 2 numbers or use them separately.  A could also add the items to any color of her choice.  For example, if she rolled a 2 and 6, she could add 8 snack items to a single color or add 2 to one color and 6 to another.

To complete a row, she had to roll the exact number needed for that color.

A quickly grabbed the dice and rolled a 3 and 5.  She chose to add them together and used her finger to count up from 5 to figure out she needed to count out 8 red raspberries.

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Next, she rolled a 4 and 6.  She wanted to complete her red color row, but I reminded her she needed to roll the exact number to complete the row.  She looked down at the red row and determined she needed 2 to finish that row and that both 4 and 6 were too big.  So, she decided to add the numbers together and – viola!  The orange row was filled.

A kept rolling, counting, and adding, trying to fill the rows in rainbow order if she could.  This dice game really had her thinking.

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Once she had her rainbow completed, it was time to dig in.  Apparently A worked up quite an appetite during this 10-minute game because she barely took a breath between fistfuls of snack.  I’m already thinking up some colorful combinations for our next rainbow snack dice game!

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For more math fun, check out our awesome Number Formation Pack!

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