GrabberMouth the Game

Coming soon to a dinner table near you . . .

The boy has been studying geometric solids in school and brought home a tetrahedron pattern (like a pyramid with a triangle base). We glued it to cardstock and then glued it together. He colored one, two and three dots on three of the sides and a set of scary teeth on the last side.

grabbermouth tetrahedron die

Then he made up a game, Grabbermouth, to play with his pyramid shaped die. Simple and surprisingly fun! Each player rolls the die in turn hoping to be the first to add dots to equal six. If the “grabbermouth” lands face down you lose all your points. This was easier for the girl using tokens so she didn’t forget how many points she had. He then set to making a similar die with a cardstock cube.

cardstock paper cube and tetrahedron pyramid

The rules for Double Grabbermouth got a bit more complicated. I was impressed with his creative use of the shapes and his ability to create the rules to a new game that probably owed a bit of inspiration to the dreidel game but certainly has its own character.

Links are included to templates from Zoomschool so you can make your own geometric solid shapes from paper.

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2 comments

  1. Katie’s avatar

    My sister taught the boys how to make origami tetrahedrans. You make “units” – then they interlock to form the tetrahedron.
    You can also use the units to make cubes… or my boy’s favorites, colliding cubes.

    Here are instructions on how to do it…

    https://www.math.lsu.edu/~verrill/origami/tetraunit/

    As you probably know… Piero’s the same age as boy, and he’s a master at this. Once they learn how to make the units – they can make a variety of cool shapes.

    1. Cindy’s avatar

      Katie – How very interesting. I was very surprised to click on the link and see something different from the traditional origami unit I was expecting. There are similarities but I will have to sit down and make both to see exactly how they are different. The traditional technique that I use works with square paper and can also be used to make “ninja stars” which seem to be all over the house!

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