Seasonal Math: Doubles Practice and DIY Counters

We are always struggling for math manipulatives as our budgets are cut each year. We use bottle caps, buttons, bread tags, beans, or pennies.
Sometimes it's fun to make seasonal counters with students, so when some kids brought in some hazelnut shells from the forest, it reminded me of an old craft I used to do years ago with acorn tops. 

It's very quick and easy. Clean the shells out, and color with felt pen inside, and fill up with white glue. (It works best with acorn tops because they are shallow.) When it dries, it's all shiny and smooth inside, and the color seeps into the glue. My students were mesmerized by the end result and my kinaesthetic learners loved rubbing the smooth surface.

What do we use them for? We've been practicing our doubles for three weeks now, and students worked together with their new counters to discover doubles. 

Doubles Partner Game Rules:

*Roll the dice
*Partner 1 puts down that many counters
*Partner 2 matches them
*Count together to find the answer and record the answer.
*Differentiate this simple game by changing the rule to doubles plus 1 or 2, doubles minus 1 or 2, or even triples!


To follow up, we made Ladybug Charts to illustrate our equations. It's simple to do - simply glue on a red circle in each section, and students draw the corresponding number of dots on each side as needed. Once they finished up to 10+10, they had the choice to continue on, using the dots as reference to find the answer independently. 

Here is a little video that we use to practice our doubles.