Teaching with Dominos

It amazes me how busy life gets when you have something you want to do. A first grader, who is important to me, needs me to teach him right now. He is smart and yet does not do his work. We are using dominos to encourage him to get his math facts. He is good at concentration but we are already using that for Phonics. We started out only playing two hands at a time. The game goes to 250 points so we keep the score going for several days. I shuffle so he can play first and then he has to shuffle so I can play first. He would be glad to play first all the time but part of his problem with school is he likes to be in control. When playing with adults, players shut down the big dominoes to keep the opponents score down. When playing with children to teach math I let the big numbers stay as long as possible. The bigger score possible the more math is used. Also this teaches math estimation as the one to go out first gets the other person's points left in their hand. He would like to estimate when he plays too but that is part of the rules and we do not change rules in a game in the middle of the game. We have done this for two weeks and sometimes he is ready to play 4 hands instead of just 2 when we have time.