Three ESSENTIALS For Math Center (FREEBIE)

Setting up Math Centers in Kindergarten

At my Fun-tastic Games & Activities for Building Early Math Skills session at SDE's I Teach K in Vegas I presented about some of my favorite Math Centers. Oriental Trading Co. was generous enough to sponsor some giveaways during the session for items that I use in my centers, so I wanted to give a shout out to them, they always have great, inexpensive materials for my centers! Today I'm sharing a little bit from that session, to give you some math center ideas for kindergarten that will help save you time and make your Math Centers more engaging this school year!

One of my biggest Aha! moments was when I realized that it was way easier to change the CONTENT of a Math Center rather than having to teach a whole new set of rules/procedures each time because I changed the activity. Today I'm sharing the 3 essentials for my math centers - I change up the themes frequently, and differentiate the skill level or content, but once I teach my students how to use these essentials, I'm set for the year! I can change the look of the games and my students' engagement is renewed, yet I'm not wasting time teaching how to use new materials!

#1 Dice

I love dice because they're so versatile, and you can get so many different kinds - dice with numbers, dice with dots, dice with shapes, dice with 6 sides all the way to 20! Once I teach my students the rules of using our dice (shake once, roll gently, keep dice on the table) we are good to go with whichever dice fit our game! One of the first games I introduce is Roll & Cover. I love this because depending on the mat and dice you use, students can be practicing one to one correspondence, number recognition, shapes recognition, addition or subtraction! When we introduce addition, students play with 2 dice, adding them together and finding the sum.

 Later in the year, my students play with 3 dice, adding them all together for sums up to 18!

When we introduce subtraction, the game play changes slightly so that they roll the dice and subtract the smaller number from the larger number and find the difference.

We also use our dice to play Ten Frame Fill-Up! In this game, each child rolls a dice an places that many tokens onto their ten frame, filling them from top to bottom, left to right.  The first one to fill up all 3 ten frames and reach 30 wins!  

For all of these games, we just use dice and tokens from Oriental Trading Company. They have these round, colorful stacking blocks that are perfect to use as tokens - they come in a ton of colors and with 400 to a pack, there's enough to even split a pack with a teacher friend!

 We also use Geometric Dice from Oriental Trading to play Roll & Cover with shapes, and even Roll & Graph!

#2 Dominoes

I also love using dominoes in the classroom - they're great for one to one correspondence, subitizing and more! They're inexpensive so I've even had some luck with asking parents to donate a set or two to the classroom (in case you need ideas for a Wishlist!). My students love my Domino Math pack too!

 Creating number bonds is easy with dominoes!

We also use dominoes when comparing numbers!

I use them to help students learn vertical addition as well!

#3 Playing Cards

Playing cards are a must-have for Math Centers because there are so many no-prep games you can play with them! Go Fish is an easy game for number recognition for example. (I get my playing cards donated by the local casino, so that's why there are holes punched in the cards.) You can have your students sort them, place them in numerical order, even create 2 or 3 digit numbers!

 

I love using playing cards for fact families. Just draw two cards and the students write the addition and subtraction equations to match! Using the cards means that if students get confused they can count the shapes on the card, so it supports my lower students. 

Comparing numbers is easy with cards as well - just remove the face cards!

With these 3 inexpensive items, you'll easily cover all your Math Skills throughout the year! Your students will also love getting to "play" with dice, dominoes and playing cards, so they'll remain motivated and engaged during centers - it's a win-win! All of the above games can be played easily with a whiteboard and dry erase marker, but if you'd like to grab my Math Bundles to make it easy on yourself, you can see them here: Math Centers for Dice and Playing Cards  and Domino Math!

Visit my store and grab this Roll & Cover Sampler pack for FREE - perfect to go with The Kissing Hand!