Math Center Ideas for First Graders in March
Are you looking for some fun independent math center ideas for your first graders to use during the month of March? Today, I’m sharing 10 easy prep math centers your students will love to use! This month’s centers include themes of St. Patrick’s Day, basketball, bugs, and spring!
Math Center Ideas for Addition and Subtraction
The game “Flip and Cover” is such a fun math center idea! Students each grab a game grid and some counters. They take turns flipping over a card and try to find a matching answer on their grid. This ladybug version works on subtraction facts up to 20.
Task cards make an easy math center! If you don’t mind your students moving around the classroom, they work great as a “Write the Room”. Hang the cards around the classroom, students grab a clipboard, pencil, and the recording sheet and walk around the room to find the cards and write the answer. It’s a great way to incorporate some movement in your classroom. In this basketball version, students write the missing addend on their worksheet.
First graders love to play memory! This version works on adding 2-digit numbers plus a multiple of ten. You could easily add some place value blocks to this center, if your students need more support to find the matching sets.
Sorting is another great idea for easy math centers! It works great to add a recording sheet for additional practice and accountability. I love these cute llamas to help students practice sorting true and false addition and subtraction equations.
Students practice solving word problems with three addends with Lucky the Leprechaun. Students grab a word problem card, some manipulatives, and a dry-erase marker. They solve the word problem and record the matching addition sentence.
More Math Centers for March
Puzzles work great for first-grade math centers. I love that they are easy for students to self-check their work. This set includes puzzles for practicing telling time to the hour and half-hour.
Here’s another “flip and cover” math center idea. Students practice identifying three-digit numbers from 100-120. They flip a card, count the place value blocks, and cover the matching basketball number. Check out this post about teaching place value for even more math center ideas.
Board games are another simple math center idea! In this game, each student gets their own gameboard. They take turns flipping over the pot of gold and finding the closest matching 3-d shape on their board. Each time they move around the board they collect a coin (paper version included). I found these cute coins at Hobby Lobby!
I always feel like it is hard to find good center ideas to work on composing shapes! This set has students build 8 different St. Patrick’s Day designs on geoboards and count how many of each shape they see.
“Roll and Graph” is a simple and effective way to work on representing and interpreting data. Students take turns rolling the dice and coloring a matching space on their graph. Then, they answer the questions and write one additional fact about their graph. This month includes two roll and graph activities.
You can learn more about these March Math Center Ideas in my TPT store.
