The purpose of this activity is to encourage students to consider multiplication as scaling. Until this point, multiplication has been viewed through the lens of skip counting with a brief introduction to repeated addition and scaling. Now, students have the chance to experiment with multiplying in a new and fun way.

Start by providing students with graphing paper. Have them draw a segment that is 2-3 boxes or units long. Explain they will create a growth laser. This is a machine that can increase the size of something. For younger students, stick to whole numbers, however, for older or more advanced students they will learn this machine can create any size by using rational values. For instance, taking a 3-unit segment and multiplying it by 5/3 can turn it into a segment of length 5. If students are not working with fractions, explain this laser will increase the size of items by making copies. To create a segment twice as long, we must set the dial to 2 and it will multiply the segment by 2.

Allow students to draw their new segment. This might come intuitively to some students and others may have more of a struggle with spacial reasoning. Remind students that to "double" means to make two of. Next, ask students to set their growth laser to 3 and draw the result. Continue upwards to 10 (maximum power) and have students make a table of their results. What do they notice? Help students to see this is a skip counting table, the length of the new segment is exactly how many 2's (or 3's depending on their initial segment) they have counted.

In our digital game, students have a growth laser and must help the Dino grow to save their babies. Level one is direct multiplication, in level two students begin to refine their skills by thinking about the closest multiple.

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