Algebra Dice!

I often find that I have to explain to people in public that I'm a teacher to explain seemingly strange behavior.  Today was one of these times but it was worth it because I'm crazy excited about this find.

I was in 5 Below and happened upon a jar that looked like this:

And in looking further I spotted a few that had said "2x" "3x" and "x" on them.  Yeah I needed them.  Oh and they were 25 cents each.  I proceded to stand at an empty register and empty the entire container to make sure I got all the ones I wanted.  

I ended up with these guys:

I'm seriously so excited.  This is the kind of thing I don't even think twice about because I know they will get used in awesome ways.

The first thing that comes to mind is just roll out an equation/inequality activity.  Roll the dice, end up with something like the picture below and solve. Awesome.

Or a similar type activity but differentiated using the number dice.  Lowest group gets 1-6 dice, middle group gets 1-12 dice (top right in the picture) and high group gets the bigger numbers.  And those ideas are just off the top of my head.

[Update]: If you don't get as lucky as I did at 5 Below or if you don't have one close I found a couple similar options available online:

• Lakeshore Math Dice Tub a little more expensive- $30 but you get 90 dice.  They don't have the ones with variables but they have some other cool ones.  Maybe a good purchace for an entire department to share
• Xtreme Math Games These are what I have plus exponents and integers.  They also have some really interesting dice inside of dice ones that could definately be fun for tons of stuff.  $8 for a set of 12 dice.
• Spectrum This one looks like a perfect mix, but is more expensive than the others- $80.50 (!) for 100 dice.  Another good option to maybe see if school could buy for the entire department.
• Amazon has a cheaper option.  You can pick up individual dice for $0.85 each and get exactly what you want.  Certainly not as cheap as $0.25, but not bad if you're only going to get a few. (the link is to the exponent dice, scroll down to "customers also bought" and you can see other options.
• Amazon You could also just pick up some blank dice and DIY these..these on Amazon are $8.84 for 36 red, white and green dice.