Quick Kindergarten And 1st Grade Math Lessons

Math does not have to be and should not be boring. Children learn best through hands-on experiences, so plan activities and lessons that are interactive and engage students in learning. Be creative. Your students will be interested in learning if you make learning interesting. Believe it or not, it is possible to plan a fun lesson without using a lot of time and resources. In high school, I was fortunate enough to have the experience to work in a kindergarten and a first grade classroom, and I learned a lot about planning lessons from the cooperating teachers. Here, I have shared some fun math lessons that the students in my placement classrooms participated in. Most of these lessons require minimal preparation and can be altered to suit the ages and the abilities of your students. The students in my placement classrooms loved these activities and I hope that your students do, too.

Shop 'Til You Drop
Create a classroom "store". Print pictures of various items and attach a price label to each picture. I suggest laminating them if you plan to use them again in the future. Feel free to be creative: use real items instead of pictures, create a theme (ex. use pictures of food items to create a food store), provide props (ex. a cash register and shopping baskets), etc. Provide each student one dollar (or more) in plastic coins and encourage them to find the different combinations of items that can be purchased with their coins. You can extend the lesson and encourage students to use the smallest possible combination of coins, the largest possible combination of coins, etc. when purchasing their items. This is best suited for small groups of students. This is an excellent lesson to connect math to the real world and to help children gain skills that can be used outside of the classroom. 

What's Crackin'?

On one half of a plastic egg, write an addition equation. On the other half of the egg, write the sum of the equation. Repeat and write a different equation on each egg. Separate the halves of the eggs and encourage students to match each half that has an equation with the half that has its solution. This game is best-suited for independent use. As an alternative to addition, you can create a subtraction, a multiplication, or a division version of this game, depending on the abilities of your students. The possibilities are endless.

(image is not mine)

Lucky Roll

Provide each student with a pair of dice. Encourage the student to roll the dice and find the sum of the numbers that he or she rolled. You can extend the lesson and encourage students to write equations for the numbers that were rolled. This game is best suited for independent use. You can use multiplication instead of addition and encourage students to find the product of the numbers that were rolled.

Ship Shape

Cut pieces of construction paper into large geometric shapes. I suggest laminating them if you plan to use them again in the future. Provide students with pattern blocks and encourage them to sort the pattern blocks onto the mats according to shape. Students can work alone or in small groups. 

(image is not mine)

Teachers: what are your students' favorite math activities and lessons?