Click on the blue button below to go to the game Polygraph on Desmos. It is much like the game Guess Who? with all of the pictures of faces on the flaps. As you ask questions you eliminate some of the choices  until you have the last remaining picture. I used pictures of animals from the Minnesota Zoo, Gale Woods Farm, and my own backyard. When you connect to Desmos you might have to wait until someone else signs in so you can play. 

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I spend a lot of time researching  and playing card games with students to strengthen their number sense. We work on making tens, number order to ten, and smoothly adding and subtracting numbers up to 100 through many different games using playing cards.

The Making Ten game is great for 2 - 4 players.
Things to remember: A = 1, Jack, Queen, and King = 0

In the center of the table place 4 cards face up. Deal out the rest of the deck equally among players. Do not look at the cards. Just stack your cards face down like in the game of War.
The first player reveals his top card and  if he can make a ten using his card and one of the table cards, he pairs them up and moves them to an area near him. He continues his turn until he cannot make any more tens. 
Play moves around to each player in turn. 
Sometimes there are several face up cards in the middle of the table. That is ok. Eventually you will be left with many picture cards because they will not get used up.
Some of my students were not confident enough in their making ten facts and needed the help of a rekenrek. 
When no more tens can be made, then each player counts up the ten pairs he has and the winner is the player with the most ten pairs.

During the one hour You Rock! class, we looked at many different rocks through hand lenses. We discovered that dipping rocks into water helps you really see the colors hiding under the gritty surface.
After making our observations, we chose a smooth beach stone weathered by wind and water to decorate with acrylic craft paints. The dotting tools we used were fantastic for making small intricate designs. We practiced on paper first to get the hang of it.  Then students chose to make a mandala design or something else!

These are the tools we use in class and they are wonderful. You really only need one set. The set below with the blue handles have some very large dotting ends. We also used fine tipped paintbrushes from Michaels. Clicking on the pictures below will take you to Amazon's page.