The Gem Jiggler

Do you habitually save things like egg cartons at your house? Sometimes my desk looks more like a recycling center than an office! But look- all that trash treasure comes in handy!

We have glass beads from the dollar store that we use for our behavior system (more on that later). Ryan still needs some work with double digit numbers. This game was super easy to make and provides another fun way to practice our numbers.

I started by cutting a single circle and asking him to trace it and cut it out 17 times. He did 4 in 30 minutes. It was great cutting practice- but I didn’t want to use all his patience on making the game! After the circles were cut I wrote the numbers and glued them to the egg carton.  TaDa done!

To play, stick a gem in the jiggler (aka the egg carton). Close it up and shake, shake, shake. The kids had a blast being super silly with their shakes. Open the jiggler and announce what number your gem is on. In yesterday’s version we announced the number, and then showed it on our abacus. If you could do both you got to keep the gem!

In the near future I’m going to use this game to introduce our place value kit.  With older kids you could have them write roman numerals or tally marks, or practice addition or subtraction. You could use sight words instead of numbers! You could use English or Spanish vocabulary. For younger kids you could include shapes or colors. Older kids could graph the colors they shake. The possibilities are endless…