Shooting Dice in the Classroom

I wasn't always a technology teacher. I did my time in the "regular" classroom. I always got the hard to handle classes because I could handle them. It made for interesting times.
These classes presented many challenges. The biggest one was always how to get them involved in their learning. I had the kids who would refuse to do a teacher created worksheet but would use polyhedral dice to roll up a hundred problems of their own to solve.

You may be asking yourself, what the heck are polyhedral dice?? For those who are not blessed to have geek and gamer friends let me show you.
Below are the most common polyhedral dice.

Dice can be found at Mathartfun.

The dice from left to right and top to bottom:
Six sided - Ten sided - Twenty sided
Four Sided - Eight Sided - Twelve Sided

Never have you seen children work so hard as the days that they were allowed to make their own math problems. Here is what you do.

Addition for the younger kids:
Two six sided dice of different colors (our school colors are red and blue so I always used red and blue dice.)
Red went first so if the child rolled the dice and got a 5 on the red die and a 6 on the blue die their problem would be 5+6= _____

Subtraction for the younger kids:
They roll two dice of the same color and put the larger number first to make their problem.

Addition for the older kids:
You can choose any number of dice in any combination just be sure that they know what color goes first. 

Subtraction for the older kids:
Again, choose any combination of dice just remind them that the larger number always goes first.

Multiplication:
Choose two 12 sided dice. Tell the kids which color goes first (again, we used red and blue with red leading) and have them roll up their problems.

Warning!
Before you start you need to lay out some rules. If you don't you will have a craps game on your hands!

My rules were simple.
Two kids, two dice - they took turns rolling the sets of dice to make the problems
There was NO "shooting" the dice. If your dice rolled off of the desk or out of your area on the floor you had to use MY worksheet to do math problems which was NO FUN!
Write legibly. If I couldn't pick your paper up and read it you had to use my math worksheets and that was....you guessed it..NO FUN!
No fighting. If you can't work it out then you need to be separated and use MY worksheet.....NO FUN! : (

Some Dice Resources (if you don't like these just look up dice on the internet!)
Learning Resources
Educator's Outlet
Dice Game Depot
I also go to my local comic book or gaming store. You can buy the dice you like in the quantities you like.
Garage sales are also a great place to get dice!