Activities for Glass Gems

I bought some gems (glass marbles with flat bottoms) at the Dollar Tree the other day and I was looking for something I could do with them besides just counting or sorting.  I found some one-to-one activities at Confessions of a Homeschooler.  She has so many great ideas and there are a lot of freebies too!  I will be using these to help my students at the beginning of the year match the objects to the correct number.  It will be a perfect beginning of the year math station!  Just click on the link to Erica's blog and it will take you to the page that has these (and other) great resources.

I also found a sight word activity using gems at Mrs. Bremer's K.  This is a really cute idea!!

I found more one-to-one ideas at Pre-K and K Sharing.

I like the idea of using the tongs to move the gems.  Not only are they working on a math skill but they are also working on fine motor skills.  The paper with the flower came from a free packet on Our Little Monkeys.

More pages similar to that one can be found on  Making Learning Fun Magnet Pages.  They are designed to be used with flat, round magnets but I think that the glass gems would work well too!  I found one for every letter of the alphabet and the numbers 1-10.  I also found pages for Brown Bear, Brown Bear What So You See by Eric Carle. Just click on the link below the picture to go to that page.  I love the website Making Learning Fun!!

 Brown Bear pictures

Now I want to go to a dollar store and buy more gems in all different colors to match the pictures!!