Teacher’s Brain

FREE Kindergarten Math Centers Your Students Will LOVE

Math centers are a fun and effective way to get kindergarten students engaged in learning and applying important math skills and strategies that we are working on in the classroom. 

Your students get to have a more active role in their learning when you use engaging centers, and it gives you a chance to do more one-on-one instruction with the students who need it. This gives students an increased sense of independence, which is always a great thing! 

They will also get the opportunity to work with hands-on manipulatives. With students this age, this improves their motivation to learn which then increases their outcomes and helps them hit benchmarks with ease. You can do individual testing once they know how to do centers independently. 

I love coming up with fun and creative centers to get my students excited about math. The opportunities are truly endless! 

My favorite math centers theme is a “Math Salad Bar” or “Math Café”

math centers

You can make your Math Café (or Buffet or Salad Bar) out of a bookcase or a rolling cart. A student pulls out the manipulative cart and then they choose a recipe card that functions like a task card. It includes the material list, number of people who can participate in the math activity, picture cues, and directions. They will choose their partners if required, fill their tray with materials, and do the activity anywhere in the room! They can easily clean up by using a tray to hold their materials.

Here are three fun activities to include in your café

  • Roll and Cover Caterpillar
  • Sorting Bears by Color
  • Fish Match-Up Addition

The best part is, you can get all three of these math centers for FREE by visiting my store here.

math centers

You’ll get everything you need to get started with your own Math Salad Bar or Math Café. 

Check out this video on how to set it up in your classroom!

For more tips, you can also check out my post here.

If you love these and want some more activities, you can get more with the full bundle here! This yearlong bundle includes digital cards, blank recipe cards, assessments, posters, and crafts as well as more math centers. 

What is your favorite thing about math centers? Let me know in the comments!

Math Centers for kindergarten

Must-Have Bundles For Elementary Teachers

The internet has changed the art of teaching in many ways- but perhaps one of the biggest ways is the ability to get new teaching materials with the click of a mouse. Gone are the days of searching print magazines or only sharing ideas with teachers in your building.

Now, you can find and share materials with the entire world! One of the most convenient ways to get lessons and activities for your class is to utilize bundles. Bundles often have enough materials to last the entire school year and are the best “bang for your buck” when it comes to purchases.

When I was in the classroom, these were my MUST-HAVE BUNDLES for teaching!

First up is my Reading Fluency Practice Activities Bundle for the entire year.

Fluency bundle

We know how important reading fluency is for our students. This set is perfect for kindergarten and first-grade classes and provides everything you need to help your students become fluent readers. There is a suggested lesson plan for every day of the year. Your lesson planning for fluency is DONE!

Mini books, reader’s theater scripts, and sentence building worksheets provide valuable practice for your students. Fluency tests are also included, allowing you to easily assess your students’ growing skills. 

Another favorite bundle is the Kindergarten Math Centers Yearlong Bundle.

math bundle

Centers are an excellent way to develop young students’ math skills. Students enjoy working in centers with their classmates and can develop their math understanding in an appropriate and engaging way. This bundle provides everything you need for an entire YEAR of fun math centers.

bundle

 The centers have a “Math Cafe” theme that students love. Once you use direct instruction to explain how to use the task cards, your students will be able to independently complete centers. While you work one-on-one or with small groups, students can work in small groups to complete centers. For one low price, your independent math practice time is ready to go for the year! 

bundle

kindergarten Math Centers


Greater Than Less Than CraftNumbers Kindergarten Math CentersMath Centers 2D 3D Shapes

Math Salad Bar Idea

Math Center Games

Wow! You can even try them for FREE!

Free Kindergarten Math Centers

Having daily writing prompts at my fingertips was a great way to get students who might have trouble being creative on their own to write using a prompt to get their creative juices flowing! I make monthly themed journals and students worked at their own pace.  There are self-checking rubrics at the bottom of each page, word banks, covers, and a teacher rubric at the end to help students get feedback.  These were used during my staff meetings to show how I monitor student progress.

Looking for Kindergarten Morning Work bundled? Check out my post here!

If you loved these bundles, there is more where that came from! You can check out a list of all of my year-long bundles here. 

I hope these ideas have inspired you to take advantage of bundles in your classroom. By streamlining your planning and preparation, you can spend more time helping your students grow and learn!


 

 

 

 

Math Centers for Kindergarten

I’m so glad you’ve stopped by my blog. Some bloggy friends and I have joined together for an old fashioned FREEBIE BLOG HOP! Not familiar with a blog hop? Here’s how it works…
Kindergarten Math Centers Freebie
blog hop      Kindergarten math centers

Each blogger has a “forever” freebie to offer you. That means it is not seasonal but can be used in your classroom at any time of the year. The freebies range from PK-5th grades. You start here and “hop” to the other blogs to download the resources that are appropriate for you and then end up back here at my blog. It’s a giant circle that will give you 23 awesome resources if you go to them all! There are 14 for PK-2.

Along the way, you will see pictures of and read about each freebie. You can download them all (to save for later) or only the ones that you need right now. If you don’t have time to go to all 23, click on one of the buttons below for your grade level.

Math “Salad Bar”

When I was teaching kindergarten, I attended a conference where someone talked about keeping a “Math Salad Bar” as a way to organize your manipulatives. You would take your manpulatives and keep them labeled and in one spot so students could easily find what they needed for a math task. I decided to take that idea and put it on steroids! I created recipe cards (task cards), used bowls for them to collect their materials, bought cafe trays and even had a rolling cart that the kids would roll to the middle of the room to begin the math centers.

Student Choice Works

Students would pick a recipe card that had the list of materials (ingredients) to complete their math activity. The card would say how many people it serves. The student picks partners if required. That group goes anywhere in the room to complete their activity. I would have several ways for students to learn one concept. So even though they all were working on the same standard, they were doing something different. They loved being able to choose their activity. My job was to observe, solve conflicts (which was rare after the first week) and take data on who needed more help in different areas.

Kindergarten Subtraction Math Centers

Math Center Problems

When we first began kindergarten math centers this new way, there were a couple issues to iron out. The main issue was how some students would react negatively if they were asked to join the activity. The person I called on would got to ask for people to join the activity, if needed. Some students were not happy about being called by certain students and it made a great discussion about feelings during circle time. After a week of students seeing that I would rotate who got to choose their task first, and talking about how sad it makes someone feel if you are rude when they were happy to pick you, they really took off and were begging for our Math Salad Bar time. Matter of fact if they had to do a traditional lesson and work alone, they were not happy about it.

Try these 3 center activities for FREE.

Why Kindergarten Math Centers?

You can still teach whole group lesson right before centers. Math centers frees you up to learn about what your students are learning. One task card is for the teacher to use called Teacher’s Table. This is where you can hand it to a couple students who you see are struggling with a math skill for remediation at your table. I never use the entire center time for remediation so they get some time to do an activity. If students finish one activity, they clean up and pick a new “recipe” card. There are assessments for the students for each nine weeks, data recording sheets to share with families and detailed plans for set up with suggestions.

What is Stopping You

What is stopping you from having math centers? I promise, if you try this you WILL LOVE IT!

Find the yearlong bundle here:

Kindergarten Math Centers YEARLONG BUNDLE

Watch a tutorial VIDEO about my set up here: How to Set Up Math Centers for Kindergarten

If you need EVERYTHING to teach Kindergarten, you can get the Kindergarten Curriculum which has ALL SUBJECTS Bundled for the entire school year. Homeschoolers love this bundle!

 

Do you do anything special for math to celebrate the 100th Day of School? Read about my ideas.