A game for 2 or more players

This game gives practise of placing decimal numbers on an empty numberline, which deepens understanding of the place value and can lead onto rounding decimals.

You will need:

Empty number lines

10-sided dice

Coloured pens/pencils

How to play

Write the numbers on the end points of the number line, according to the numbers you want to work with and use the corresponding number of dice rolls:

• 0 and 10 for numbers with 1 decimal place - 2 dice rolls
• 0 and 1 for numbers with 2 decimal places - 2 dice rolls
• 0 and 0.1 for numbers with 3 decimal places - 3 dice rolls

The players must then work together to record the other numbers on the line or, for more challenge, they can be left blank.

Players each choose a differently coloured pen/pencil and then take turns rolling the dice, placing the numbers rolled in any order as follows:

• For a number with 1 decimal place, one roll will be the whole ones and the other will be the tenths.
• For numbers with more than one decimal place, there will always be zero whole ones and the rolls can be used in any order for the decimal part.

The number is then marked on the numberline. If the number has already been marked by a player, rearrange the digits if possible, or roll again.

The winner is the first player to mark 4 numbers in an unbroken line.

Variations

To play this game with more players, enlarge the numberline to include more space to record the numbers.

For a quicker game, particularly when there are more players, the winner is the first to get 3 numbers in a line.

Play a whole number or fraction to decimal version