Quiet Dice Solution

Hi there fans and followers of The Organized Classroom Blog!  Today, I created another video!  Whoo hoo!

This one is from a tip from Janice!  I mentioned how the sounds of 15 sets of dice hitting the table (or mainly the floor as they were being whipped about), was almost unbearable without carpeting.  Janice’s idea was fantastic and super economical (aka cheap).

I loved it so much, I decided to try my hand at recreating it for all of you to see.  Keep in mind, as I have said before, that I am not that crafty, so if I can get it done, then anyway can.  I did tweak it a little only because I did not have all the materials she suggested.

Video Transcript:

“Hi everyone. It’s charity Preston here from the Organized Classroom Blog. It’s great to see you back today. All right, so here’s a fun little tip that actually came from a comment on one of my blog posts. This tip came from Janice. Thank you so much Janice for the fantastic idea.

It was the blog post where I was actually talking about the Think Fun Math Dice and Math Dice Jr and we were talking about how the noise from the dice.

For instance, I’m gonna roll this on my desk. Hear how loud it is?

If you have 15-30 sets of those they could pretty much drive you insane with all the noise. So Janice posted a fantastic idea that I wanted to share with you today.

Now in addition to her idea, I also wanted to mention that I purchased a bunch of these.

They look like regular dice, but they’re actually erasers that I found at the dollar store several years ago and I bought tons and tons of packs of these.

Yes, third graders will pick at them and pick the corners once they realize they are erasers. You have to kind of keep an eye on them, but they are fantastic. You can’t hear them at all when they drop because they’re just rubber erasers and they rolled just like a regular dice would. So anyway, that’s a little tip if you happen to run across those, grab them up in bunches because they were one of the best investments that I’ve ever made and I only use them as dice. They are not used as erasers at all. I don’t even mention it to the students. But of course you’ll have a few of that that will catch on to that.

All right, so for today’s project, you are going to need a foil pie pan.

Seriously, these were, I think six of them in a pack for $2 maybe. So relatively very inexpensive.

Then Janice actually suggested felt to put in the bottom of the pan. I couldn’t find felt in the store that I was at today, so I had to improvise, which I tend to do a lot.

I think felt would work phenomenally, but I didn’t have any, so I actually went with foam. I had big sheets of foam and I set the tin on top of the foam, traced around the foam with the edge of the pan here, and then cut it out so I could lay them on the inside. I ended finding fancy circles that were already cut out so that was even better.

You are going to want to glue it down. And then this is what mine looks like. Then I took sticky foam stickers and I just put them around my pie tin. Here’s mine. You could do it around the outside if you wanted.

I chose not to do on the outside because I want to be able to stack them when the students are finished using them and put them on my shelf or wherever I have them stored.

Another idea that I had, (I’m totally not crafty), was to take stickers and put them around the outside or some kind of paper, and then put your circle in the middle. It would probably look way super cute. I’m just not that crafty. So I went with the one thing that I know that I can do and foam stickers is where it’s at for me.

You could even have students do these maybe the first week of school, lay out all the materials and have them have add and decorate them for you however you would like to do it.

Now let’s take a listen to our dice here and what it sounds like.

Much, much better than all over the table.

I love this because it then keeps it contained in that circle, so they are not throwing dice all over the place and all over the floor and everywhere else. This is super nice for that.

When it’s time to clean up, you put all the dice in the top one, stack them up and you’re good to go.

So thank you so much to Janice for that fantastic idea. Keep them coming guys. Like I said, use the contact me form at the Organized Classroom’s blog under the about tab right at the very top of the toolbar.

You can contact me, email me, and let me know some of your other tools. Simple. Make it take it ideas that you could be doing in your classroom or setting up. And if it’s simple and it’s not too crafty, (I’m not that crafty), please send it to me. I may make a video about it.

I’m so excited. I love sharing these ideas with everyone here and showing you how I would use them in the classroom. So thank you for visiting!

That’s it for today. We’ll see you again at the next one. All right. Bye.”

I hope you enjoy Janice’s great idea and please feel free to thank her in the comments below.  Please continue to post your great teaching tips on our Facebook Fan Page wall and/or send me an email message from my Contact Form and perhaps I will make the next video with your idea!

See you there!

~Charity