Hey Kristen,
In my hall, I am known as the person with lots of those plastic jewels. I have hearts, leaves, acorns, pumpkins, fish, etc. that I have collected over the years. You asked what you do with the jewels. My class loves to use them to play games, build numbers on the 10 frame and more. One of my favorite uses for them is a More/ Less game. For example, student one is red, Student 2 is pink. The students would use the Valentine Grid (with 20 squares)found at http://www.prekinders.com Students take turns rolling the die. Sometimes I use a dot die othertimes I use a numeral die. Say stuedent 1 rolls a 5. She will put 5 red hearts on the board. Student two rolls a 3, she will put 3 hearts on the grid. They continue until the board is full. At the end of the game, they have to roll a die that has the words More/Less written on it. The die determines the winner!
Another way I use the seasonal jewels is to use them like points. For example, I may have students reading sight word cards. As they each take a turn, they read the words. If they read the word correctly then they put a jewel in their cup, if they can not read the word or read it incorrectly then the card is returned to the bottom of the bag and it is the next players turn. At the end of the game they count the jewels to determine the winner.
One other way I use them is to put them in Inventory Bags. Students have to choose a bag that has been label A, B, C, etc. They record the bag letter and then count the jewles inside. On the recording sheet next to the place that says Bag A – the student records the total number of jewels that were in the bag. ( I keep my baggies taped shut but you could leave them so students could dump and count) I used to do that but they were always losing the jewels and the answers were varying too much. Also, taping the bag shut kepps those cute little jewels from getting into pockets. We sort, count and pattern with them throughout the year too.

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