Pick out some smooth rocks and grab your paint pens to make an inexpensive matching math game. Write a number on one rock and dots matching that number on the other. You suddenly have a manipulative/game for little to no cost. Make a colorful set for your child's teacher to use in his or her classroom!

Add in some addition, subtraction, and equal sign symbols, and you can build linear equations. You can also make capital letter and lower case letter rocks to match or to spell words with. You could even make sight word rocks. Get creative, and have fun! Let the kids help, and they won't even know they are learning while they are creating.