Friday, May 27, 2016

Centers

Spring Themed Math Center Ideas

Number Recognition

Long time no see! Sorry I've been incognito, but I have finished up my hectic spring semester and a May mini semester. Now I have a "break" from school for a month, and then right back at it with two classes in July...along with a cruise...along with moving to a new apartment...pray for my sanity in that month! Let's get into my post.

Recently I had to design three center activities in a Pre-K classroom. I chose the number recognition guideline, and since it's spring time, I decided to make it a spring flower theme!
 
My beautiful presentation of my 3 activities!

Like I said earlier, they are all about number recognition and these activities can be used in the beginning and the end of the school year. I had my students at the end of the spring semester, so that means I didn't really have to explain each center in intense detail. But they were still challenging and engaging enough for the kids to not get super bored!

My first one uses play-doh! I made play-doh mats with flowers on them. The number in the center of the flower is how many leaves they need to make for that flower. I provided different cut outs and tools so that each child can make their leaves however they'd like.
Here is a close up of the instructions I included with the activity.

Materials for activity 1:
  - Basket or container for the materials
  - Play-doh mats (I found clip art flowers, put numbers on them, printed, and laminated the paper.)
  - Play-doh and tools

   The second activity is a basic match the numbers to the amount of dots. I printed and cut out pictures of flowers and leaves. Each flower has a number on it, and each leaf has dots on them and they are glued to a clothespin. Since it was later in the year, they could match the leaf to the correct flower pretty quickly. So I had them put them in numerical order after they finished matching!
A close up of the instructions I put with the activity.

   Materials for activity 2:
     - Basket or container for the materials
     - Flowers (clip art flowers, put numbers on them, printed, and laminated the paper.)
       - Leaves (clip art leaves, put dots on them, printed, laminated, and glued to the clothespins.)

    The third activity is similar to the first activity. I made "vases" with numbers on them, and made "flowers". The kids had to put the right amount of flowers in each vase.
A close up of the instructions I put with the activity.

   Materials for activity 3:
    - Basket or container for the materials
    - Flowers (clip art flowers, printed, laminated, and glued to pipe cleaners - looking back at this I wished I had glued them to popsicle sticks, so do that instead!)
    - Vases (clip art vases, put numbers on them, print, cut, laminated - separately from the background paper!!, and glued to laminated construction paper.)

   So there's my pre-k/kinder number recognition activities! Hope you enjoyed them, and use my ideas if you'd like just give me credit!

  Keep on Teaching on,
   Charity




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