Mining For Jewels

Happy Sunday!  We had a little fun in math this week with a new game I call Mining For Jewels.  I made the game with some deals from...wait for it...Dollar Tree and...wait for it...Walmart!  Around Easter, I found some beautiful metallic plastic eggs at Walmart.  Really, they are so pretty!  Not only are they metallic, but they are the prettiest jewel tones.  Frankly, they reminded me of jewels.  I bought several packages of the jewels (formerly known as eggs) and wrote one number on the inside of each half.  Next, I found butterfly nets at the Dollar Tree for, of course, one crisp dollar each!  I have all the jewels in a laundry basket.  My first graders use the butterfly nets to scoop one jewel, open it, and write a math fact with the two numbers that are inside the jewel.  Then they write the whole fact family! 

A lot of fun for a little money and building math skills, too!  What could be better?

Fondly,