This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 2nd grade / 4 - 7 years On the playground, find an area with a flat surface, like a basketball court. First, pick a starting point and an ending point. Next, have students walk from point A to point B in regular steps, counting each step as you go. How many steps did you count? Now walk the entire length using baby steps. How many baby steps did you count? Try it skipping. How many skips did you count? Vary the ways in which you move from point A to point B. For older students, bring a tape measure and measure the length.
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 1st grade / 3 - 6 years Use bubbles to explore shapes, counting and colors! Below are some activities you can do with store-bought bubbles or a homemade solution made from dishwashing soap and water. (If you do these activities indoors, be sure to lay down newspapers or towels to prevent a slippery floor.) Encourage scientific observation skills! As children blow bubbles, ask: “What happens if you blow hard? If you blow softly? If you touch a bubble? How long do bubbles last? What color are bubbles? Are all bubbles the same shape? The same size?” Record children’s observations on chart paper labeled “Observations About Bubbles.” Add some liquid tempera to the bubble mixture, and hang poster paper on an easel. Have children blow bubbles onto the paper and see what designs form when they pop. Encourage active play! Go outside. Choose three children to be the bubble blowers. Set a time limit and have them blow as many bubbles as they can while the other kids race to pop the bubbles. Build counting skills with bubbles! Encourage the children to blow a set of bubbles that you specify. (For example, if you say “three,” children would try to blow three bubbles.)
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - kindergarten / 3 - 5 years Encourage students to use their holiday gift boxes for a few hands-on math activities: Large to Small—Gather a few boxes of varying sizes and have students arrange them in order, from largest to smallest or smallest to largest. Mix & Match—Take some boxes of different sizes and shapes and separate them from their lids. Then challenge students to match each lid to its correct container—as fast as they can! Quantity Count—Tape a blank note card to the inside bottom of several boxes. Label each note card with a different numeral. Then have students place corresponding numbers of classroom objects or small toys inside the different boxes. Cash & Carry—Have students cut out pictures of toys from a favorite catalog and place them in a box along with the price of each item. Then set up a “store” and have them select a few items that they would like to buy. Have students take turns being the cashier and the customer. Give them some fake coins and bills with which to practice purchasing and counting out change.
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 2nd grade / 3 - 7 years Cut strips of colored construction paper and have your children loop them together to make a paper chain. Then encourage them to count down to a certain anticipated event over the holidays (e.g., Christmas Day, the last night of Hanukkah, the beginning of Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve, or even the first day of school after their holiday break). Have them label the links on the chain with numbers corresponding to the dates on the calendar. You can even have them alternate colors of construction paper to practice skip counting by odd and even numbers. Or show them how to repeat the same colors every three or four links to make a color pattern.
This activity is appropriate for: kindergarten - 3rd grade / 5 - 8 years This month, set up some fun learning centers with these creative ideas for spring! Read & Learn Comprehension Center Encourage children to sharpen their comprehension skills with these engaging, spring-themed reading passages! Print out several copies of the Comprehension Cards and place them in a file folder. Have students read the passages silently or with a partner and answer the questions. Kite Scenes Geometry Center Place light blue construction paper and pattern blocks in a center. (If you don’t have pattern blocks, simply download this pattern blocks template and reproduce it for students to use.) On separate index cards, write the name of each pattern block shape, such as triangle, square, trapezoid, parallelogram, rhombus and hexagon. (Be sure to review the name of each shape before having students work independently!) Invite students to choose two or three cards, find the corresponding pattern blocks, and trace the blocks onto a 9" x 12" sheet of blue construction paper. If using the template, have students cut out the shapes and glue them onto the paper. Encourage them to use colored pencils or crayons to add details to the picture so that the shapes look like kites flying in the sky. They can draw the kites’ tails and strings, grass, flowers, clouds and more. After students have completed their pictures, have them describe the shapes they used in their pictures. Or, for older students, provide copies of the Pattern Block Kites reproducible and have them fill it out to describe their picture. Display the pictures with the students’ descriptions on a spring bulletin board titled “Pattern Block Kites.” Nature Detectives Science Center Take your students on a nature walk around the school grounds, and help them collect plant samples to bring back to the classroom for observation. (Or you can have them bring plants from home.) Provide each student with a magnifier and a Plants & Flowers Observation Sheet. Encourage them to examine their specimens and record their observations. After students are finished, invite them to tape their specimens to the top portion of a sheet of construction paper and attach the observation sheet to the bottom portion. Collect the pages, bind them together in a class book and place them in a science center for students to enjoy! For younger students, collect several specimens from plants common in your area, such as a fern, flower, branch and magnolia leaf. Attach each specimen to an index card and label it for added literacy exposure. Then place the cards at a center with magnifiers. Have students choose a specimen, observe it with the magnifier and draw it on a piece of paper. For additional writing practice, challenge students to label the picture by copying the name of the specimen. Little Ladybugs Counting Center Reproduce the ladybugs template onto red construction paper. Cut out the number tiles and ladybug counters, and place them at a center. (You can also laminate the pieces to make them more durable.) For young students, have them choose a number tile and count out the corresponding number of ladybugs. For older students, create additional tiles with math symbols such as an addition sign, a subtraction sign and an equal sign. Then prompt students to create math problems and use the ladybugs to find the answers! Write About It! Spring Language Center Reproduce these Spring-Themed Writing Prompts and place them at a center with pencils and crayons. Invite students to let their creativity flow as they write and illustrate their own stories!
This activity is appropriate for: 2nd - 6th grade / 7 - 11 years Plan a scavenger hunt…for information your class learned throughout the year! Create a list of questions whose answers can be found in books the class read during the year. (Make sure copies of the books are available in your classroom library or reading center.) Make a copy of the list for each child in class, and then let them “hunt” for the answers. Have kids write down each answer and where they found it. Give children a time limit in which to find the information. When time is up, collect students' answers. Count up the correct answers and give a prize to the student(s) who found the most! Note: Tell children that they don’t need to answer the questions in order—that way, if the book needed to answer the first question is being used, they can simply answer another question on the list.
This activity is appropriate for: kindergarten - 2nd grade / 5 - 7 years Make Valentine’s Day extra special with these fun and easy-to-use learning center ideas! Read Your Heart Out Reading Center Fill your classroom library with a dozen or so age-appropriate Valentine-themed books. Invite students to choose a story and curl up on some floor pillows for reading time! Some suggestions include: The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond Happy Valentine’s Day, Little Critter! by Mercer Mayer Nate the Great and the Mushy Valentine by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat Amelia Bedelia’s First Valentine by Herman Parish Arthur’s Great Big Valentine by Lillian Hoban The Biggest Valentine Ever by Steven Kroll The Night Before Valentine’s Day by Natasha Wing How Many Hearts? Math Center Students will love solving simple addition problems with this hands-on Valentine math center! To prepare the center, you will need a die, a few small heart-shaped stampers and a red ink pad, as well as several copies of the How Many Hearts? downloadable page. Cut the copies in half along the dotted line. Have each student take a How Many Hearts? sheet and roll the die. Encourage them to write down the number of dots shown and stamp the corresponding number of hearts above the number in the space provided. Repeat the process for the second number in the addition problem. Then, have students count the total number of stamps to find the correct answer. Variation: Instead of stamps, you can use colorful heart stickers! Can You Hear Your Heartbeat? Science Center This easy-to-create science center will introduce young children to the basic concept of scientific observation! Simply provide a stethoscope at the table for students to use. One at a time, have students use the stethoscope to listen to their heartbeats. Then, have them stand up and do ten jumping jacks and listen to their heartbeats again. Ask them what happened! (Note: You may want to have a parent or other adult volunteer stationed at this center to facilitate questions and clean the stethoscope earpieces with alcohol swabs or disinfecting pads between uses.) Valentine Verses Writing Center Set up a center with heart-themed writing paper and fun Valentine pens or pencils. Invite students to write a poem about people or things in their lives that they love. You may want to help them get started by displaying this poem on posterboard in your learning center. Prompt students to copy the lines of the poem and fill in the blanks with thoughts of their own! Roses are red, Violets are blue, I love my _______________ And ________________, too! Or, have students make up their own verses and write them on the downloadable heart-shaped writing template. After the poem is written, mount it onto red or pink construction paper. Display the poems on a bulletin board in your classroom for Valentine’s Day! Valentine Words Language Center Write the word “VALENTINE” in capital letters across a sentence strip and place it in a center. Provide students with paper and pencils and challenge them to make a list of as many words as they can spell using only the letters in that word! For variation, try the same activity with other Valentine’s Day words, such as sweetheart, candy, cupid, flowers, chocolate and so on.
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 1st grade / 3 - 6 years This fun family tie-in helps students take what they know—and graph it! Conduct a quick student survey on any of the following topics, tally the responses, and then make a class graph to show the results: Siblings – Encourage students to share how many brothers or sisters they have. Label the columns of your graph with the following: “Only child,” “1 sibling,” “2 siblings,” “3 siblings” and “4 or more siblings,” and then tally and graph the results. Pets – Invite students to share what kind of pets they have at home. Label the columns of your graph with the following: “No pets,” “Dog,” “Cat,” “Bird” and “Other,” and then tally and graph the results. At-Home Head Count – Ask students to share how many people live in their home. Label the columns of your graph with the following: “2–3 people,” “4–5 people,” “6-7 people” and “More than 7 people,” and then tally and graph the results.
This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 1st grade / 4 - 6 years In honor of Presidents’ Day, take the opportunity to point out to your students that most U.S. coins feature pictures of past American presidents. Then, let your students explore the coins hands-on with these fun activities! Coin Rubbing—Divide the class into groups of three or four, and provide each group with several different coins to share. Then, give each student a sheet of paper and some crayons. Have students place the paper on top of a coin and gently color over the paper with the side of a crayon to make a coin rubbing. Encourage them to repeat the process with both sides of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. The result will be colorful imprints of a variety of coins! Penny Probability—Place three pennies and a dime into a paper bag. Ask students to predict which of the two types of coins they are likely to pull out of the bag at random. Test their predictions by drawing a coin out of the bag and recording which coin was selected. Replace the coin and repeat this process 10 times. Allow different student volunteers to take turns removing and replacing the coins. At the conclusion of the demonstration, guide students in discovering that the probability of selecting the penny out of the bag is 3 out of 4, while the probability of selecting the dime is only 1 out of 4. Simple Sorting—Reinforce categorizing and sorting skills by having students work in pairs to sort jars of coins into piles by coin type. Then, have them arrange the different piles in order by size or by value. Penny Predictions—Hold up a penny and ask students to guess how many drops of water they think will fit on the penny. As they guess, ask them to explain why they think their guesses are reasonable. Then have each student work with a partner and give each pair a penny, an eyedropper, and a small cup of water. Encourage the pair to designate one person to count while the other carefully places drops of water onto the penny—one drop at a time until the water “overflows” and drips off of the surface of the penny. Then have them switch roles to try it again. Invite the class to compare their results and discuss whether or not they were consistent. (You might want to provide a simple explanation for how the water drops cling to the penny’s surface and create a “net” called surface tension until the force of gravity becomes stronger than the water and causes the “net” to break.)
This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 1st grade / 4 - 6 years This activity helps students to feel proud of their names…and familiarizes them with the names of their classmates. It even provides an opportunity to practice essential math skills with a colorful bar graph! Begin by asking students to think about their names. What’s special about their name? Were they named after a family member or a close family friend? Ask them how they would feel if someone called them by the wrong name. After you’ve discussed a little bit about why everybody’s name is special to them, read the story Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. Ask students to describe how Chrysanthemum’s feelings changed throughout the story. How does she feel about her name at the beginning of the story? What about the middle? How does she feel at the end? Why did her feelings change? Then ask students to count the number of letters in Chrysanthemum’s name. On a piece of posterboard, make a classroom bar graph of the number of letters in each student’s name. Who has the most letters in her name? Who has the least?
