Math small groups have always been a little daunting for me. There is never any time for guided math in kindergarten either. It is confession time. It is hard to admit but… I am not a big fan of math. In my opinion, there are math people, and then there are ELAR people. I am definitely the latter. I love Reading and English Language Arts. Math…. not so much.
However, I recently attended a two-day workshop on math centers and THEN had to go back to my school and present what I learned to the group. The workshop was great. It was 20+ teachers in a room doing centers (fuuuuuuun!) While I got to experience OVER 50 centers, here are a few quick ones with stuff you probably already have in your room that can be used in guided math for kindergarten or preschool.
These were a few of my favorite.
Hide the Bears
I know this seems so simple but this really shows if a child can compose/decompose numbers. You show the children 5 bears/cubes/counters and then put the all under the bowl. Take out different numbers of cubes and ask the child to tell you how many are hiding. It was really fun to see the kids do this and it was really fun for the to see if they were right.
Groovy Buttons
Pete the Cat Groovy Buttons was fun because it incorporates my favorite thing… Literature! 😉
On this one the children take turns rolling dice and either adding or subtracting buttons depending on the still that you are working on. It would be very easy to add a recording sheet to this for an individual center. You can click HERE for the template I found online.
Composing and Decomposing
I couldn’t find these Hefty animal plates anywhere so I ordered the from Amazon but people assure me that you can still get them at the store. These are great for part-part whole, composing decomposing, addition and subtraction. In the small group activity, were given a word problem and used the cubes to represent bracelets and given them away. There are a lot of possibilities with these plates.
Sticker Store
Lastly, this is so simple that I can’t believe I never thought of it. It’s called “Sticker Store.” Each child gets a small bag or container of coins and there are bags labeled with the names of the coins. They have to buy them from you with their money. In kindergarten, we are just working on coin recognition BUT if you wanted to make this harder, you could easily charge certain amounts for first grade which would require adding coins and understanding money. 🙂
To sum up, there you have it. My favorite centers from the math workshop that I attended. Hopefully, these are something you can use in your classroom. If you have any easy math small group activities, I’d love to hear them! Leave a comment.
If you want to read more about some of my math and literacy centers, then check out this post!
