Orders of Operations

This week I began each class with a warm up called Math Bowling and my students shouted "yes!" when they saw it on my promethium board. ( I acquired this game from the Avid summer institute math strand where I also learned a ton of other fun activities.)  this game is based on orders of operations but the kids just think it is a competitive game.  The object is to knock down all the pins...I used 1 through 6 but you could really do as many as you want.  I have large foam dice that we throw or roll to get our numbers.  For example, yesterday we rolled 0, 2, 4, & 5. My students are situated in teams of 4.  Each team then works together to use those four numbers and the operators they know as well as their knowledge of the order of operations to make the numbers add up to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6.  For example,  2+4+(5*0)=6.  The best part is they work so well together to try and be the first team to knock down all the pins.  I award the first 3 teams points but we all enjoy the game and it starts off math class on the right foot!