A preschool math center is the perfect “addition” to the classroom. A dedicated area or table keeps things organized and promotes mathematical exploration. This preschool math center from Constructive Playthings is so versatile! It is easy to provide a variety of activities for students to play and learn all about math!
Preschool Math Center “Must Haves”
Every preschool math center needs a few staple items.
- child sized furniture including a table and a few seats
- storage bins for several different types of manipulatives
- recording materials – pencils, papers, crayons
- two dimensional or “flat” shapes – tangrams, magnet tiles, magnets
- 3-D shapes – cubes, spheres, cylinders, pyramids
- numbers – in magnets or just plastic
- number lines
- sorting trays
- ten frames
- Spinners
- Dice
- Clothespins
- Markers and Crayons
While that seems like a lot, keep in mind that only a few items should be out at a time to focus on math and not on dumping all the materials!
Organization and Function in One
This math center has so many amazing features it’s hard to pick a favorite. Built of solid 5/8 birch wood, the piece itself is a preschool teacher’s dream. Sturdy enough to withstand the most enthusiastic learners, Constructive Playthings has thought of all the details in this center.
- magnetic white board – use to display anchor charts, number lines, or keep tally with a dry erase marker
- fold-down table top – child height for easy interaction
- 4 shelves of storage on the back – keep all materials on-hand and within reach for ease in changing out the center
- 2 preschool-sized stools – allows students to easily and comfortably interact with the center.
Read more about the Mitten Button Counting and get the free printable mittens HERE.
Adding and Shapes and Ten Frames, Oh My!
One of the most important features to look for when investing in the classroom is the piece’s functionality. It is easy to rotate and switch out the content with this preschool math center. Therefore, it is easy to cover many standards and keep students interested, engaged, and learning! Also, note that students can use this furniture for other learning stations, such as a writing station or even a small café table in dramatic play!
If new furniture isn’t in the budget this year, a small table and chairs in a quiet area can be used. This particular piece fits the bill nicely, but every classroom is different!
Skills to Try at the Preschool Math Center
Numbers & Number Sense
Having a solid sense of numbers and understanding one-to-one correspondence is essential in an early learning environment. While flashcards and rote memorization may have been standard practice in years past, they tend to be repetitive, and children lose interest. Providing math experiences for children should “build largely upon their play and the natural relationships between learning and life in their daily activities, interests, and questions.“
Math centers that students can use without a teacher’s assistance create a more playful approach than if the teacher was guiding the activity. Count-and-clip activities, such as the one pictured, are very successful as students can check their answers when the teacher matches a small sticker to the correct answer on the reverse side.
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Holiday Math and Literacy Centers for Preschoolers
$40.80Celebrate the holidays all year round with these 12 packs of math & literacy centers. Each one includes 5 activities that preschoolers can use during centers or small group time.
Included:
- Christmas
- Diwali
- Easter
- Groundhog Day
- Halloween
- Hanukkah
- Kwanzaa
- New Year’s
- St. Patrick’s Day
- Thanksgiving
- Valentine’s Day
- 4th of July
Sometimes the teacher does need to assist, however. Small manipulatives can help keep a playful sense of the work being done. Using tiny pumpkins, Christmas trees, or snowflakes as counters to represent numbers is an inexpensive way to keep things playful. They are perfect for the math center and are easily found in the seasonal section of craft stores or dollar stores.
Coupled with a gingerbread circle time unit, the center has students counting the number of gumdrops in the tens-frame, then matching the number to the frame. Scaffolding is provided as students match the number to the frame in a puzzle-type of setting.
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Printable Preschool Math Centers
$12.00Preschool Math Centers include learning about shapes, colors, sorting, patterns, and numbers. This set of 12 centers offers fun, hands-on ways for the youngest students to practice.
Patterns
Recognizing and extending simple patterns is an important part of a child’s intellectual development. It is a precursor to algebra and an activity many children enjoy. The ability to differentiate to any theme is one of the best parts of this center. Here it was used along with a Christmas Unit, using small gift bows to represent the colored ornaments. Students can make patterns with counting cubes, mini erasers, or any number of small seasonal items!
Shapes
Young children encounter shapes in everyday life and begin to recognize them even before they formally learn the names of the shapes. Students can select shapes from a bin and sort them according to their match on the table during a unit like this one on Outer Space. By doing this, students begin to recognize attributes such as the roundness of circles or the three straight lines in a triangle.
Identifying shapes when given a picture of an object is a slightly more advanced skill. Here, the students are looking at pictures of items such as a soccer ball (circle), a present (square), and assorted other items to determine which bucket they match up with.
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Sorting
In preschool, sorting materials according to attributes such as size, color, or texture helps children recognize relationships among items. For this setup, the class was doing an apple unit during circle time. The center was set up so that students selected an apple counter from the center bin and sorted it according to color. As an added element, varying-sized counters were used, allowing students to sort within each color by size as well.
More Preschool Math Center Resources
Want to read more about making math a playful center? Check out this article from NAEYC.
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Seasonal Letter (and Number) Cards
$4.00Use these SEASONAL LETTER CARDS at your alphabet center, math center, or sensory writing trays. Each of the 10 sets includes 26 upper case, 26 lower case, and numbers 1-12. Use a themed set each month!