Sometimes I’m loaded. I am a hardware random number generator. What am I? A die. Numerical dice are bursting with maths opportunities and a common cubical 1-6 die can be used to play a variety of activities and games. Try these out: Players can take it in turns to throw a die and each time add their score to their previous total. The first to 100 wins.

Can you make a tower of four dice and make all four sides of the tower total the same?

Throw two dice and make a vulgar fraction with the numbers thrown. Draw an empty number line from 0 to 1 and mark the place where the fraction should go.

Throw two dice and multiply together. See how many times you need to throw to get a prime number, a square number, and a number with 9 factors. One of the best ways of using dice is getting children to invent their own games.

Dice are perfect resources to practise maths at school and home

John Dabell is a numeracy consultant and teacher trainer