Engaging April Centers for First Grade Math and Literacy

I love April! It’s the first full month of spring and, for us down here in Texas, the last full month of the school year. The weather is warm and the plants are blooming all around us. The excitement for summer and the end of the school year is in the air! I also get excited about using these interactive and engaging April centers for first grade. What a great way to bloom into spring with fun and learning all in one!

Most years, April brings Easter, although sometimes it sneaks in at the end of March. We celebrate Easter with these engaging read alouds and this fun bingo game. We study plants with our Plants Science Unit and learn about the life cycle of a flower with this craftivity. 

Later on in April, we celebrate Earth Day and discuss the importance of taking care of the earth with this emergent reader. We can even help our first graders practice telling time with these spring time puzzles.

To keep my first graders busy all during this month of sun and growth, I’ve created these math and literacy centers for April. With springtime themes and adorable clipart, your students won’t even realize they’re learning while they have fun with these April-themed centers for first grade. 

April Math and Literacy Centers for First Grade 

With 20 literacy centers and 20 math centers, your students will be able to review various first grade standards and skills, all while having a blast. 

These hands-on math and literacy centers for first grade are a fabulous resource to keep on hand to use during center or station rotations, small groups, or even as whole-class activities. You’ll adore the versatility of these spring-themed centers for first grade, and your first graders will have a blast with all the fun they get to have while learning! 

Included in the First Grade Math and Literacy Centers for April

4 weeks of April Literacy Centers for First Grade:

• Pocket Chart and Match-Up Activities 
• Cards and Materials for your Writing Center
• Puzzles and Write & Wipe Activities
• Poetry Center Materials
• Write the Room Centers

Giving you 20 April first grade literacy activitIes!

4 weeks of April Math Centers for First Grade: 

• Write & Wipe Activities
• Dice Games
• Partner Games
• Write the Room Activities
• Puzzles and Match-Ups

Adding up to 20 April first grade math centers!

All together, this product gives you 40 printable math and literacy activities for April.

The Math Centers cover these skills:

• Place Value, Graphing, Word Problems, Addition, Coins, Fractions, Number Order, 10 More/10 Less, Subtraction, Expanded Notation, Skip Counting, Comparing Numbers…and more!

The Literacy Centers cover these skills:

• Poetry, Writing, Sequencing, Sight Words, Vowel Teams, Segmenting Words, Trigraphs, Digraphs, Word Families, Contractions…and more!

Using these April Centers for First Grade

With 40 springtime centers to use with your first grade students, it can understandably be overwhelming to decide how to set them up and use them in your classroom. Here are some tips for you to check out after you purchase the centers.

• Plan ahead! Do you have the full year of our first grade centers? Prep the centers during the previous month so that you can decide what needs to be printed, copied, laminated, and cut before you need to use them. 
• The first time you use the centers, it will probably be a lot of work, but printing on cardstock and/or laminating can help you keep many of the pieces for the following year. Pro tip: before storing the centers away, make a class set of all the black and white consumables, like the recording sheets, and store them away with the other materials. Your future self will thank you!  
• Pick and choose what centers you’ll want to use with your students during the month. Will you model all of the activities at the beginning of the month? Or will you do it one week at a time? There is no right answer, do what’s best for you!
• Set clear and understandable expectations for each type of center. I like to model each activity explicitly before I let my students anywhere near the materials. After they do each center a few times, they’ll be accustomed to the format and the need for help from you will be a lot less! 

Materials suggested for the April Centers: 

• Copy paper, Colored copy paper, and/or Cardstock
• Laminator and Laminating sheets
• Dice
• Dry erase markers
• Erasers
• Write the room wall hangers 

April Literacy Centers and Activities for First Grade

Poetry
With three April poems and one nursery rhyme, your students will learn to enjoy poetry as much as we do! With age-appropriate language, students can practice rhyming, identifying patterns and parts of speech, and visualizing the poems. The Earth Day poem in this set of April poems is definitely one of my favorites!

Pocket Chart and Match-Ups
The pocket chart writing activities for April include a “How to Grow a Plant” sequencing and writing activity and a springtime sentence scramble. The pocket chart match-ups include a sight word hide and seek game and a vowel team match-up for your first graders to play together. 

Write & Wipe and Puzzles 
Your students will have fun building puzzles while practicing vowel teams and contractions this April. The write and wipe activities are easy to do with a page protector (if you don’t laminate them) and a dry erase marker. Your first graders can practice spelling words with digraphs and different word families while having fun with these activities. 

Writing
Inspire your little writers this spring with different writing cards and materials each week. Give students word cards for topics like Earth Day, Easter, Garden, and Insects, and see where their imagination takes them. I guarantee you’ll get some incredible pieces of writing by the end of the month! 

Write the Room
Get your first grade kiddos up and moving this April with these write the room activities. Students can practice manipulating the middle sound in words, decoding words with digraphs, segmenting sounds, and working with trigraphs while making their way around the room. Of course, if you’d rather have everyone sitting down, these work as task cards at a center as well!

April Math Centers and Activities for First Grade 

Partner Games
My students love any chance they get to play games with their classmates. That’s why these partner games are perfect for each month of the year! For April, your first graders can play together while practicing fractions, number order, coins, and adding and subtracting. I like to use these games for my early finishers too. 

Dice Game Centers
Hand your students some dice (preferably foam, because ouch, my ears!) and let them have at it with these engaging, springtime dice games. Students will have a great time building a bunny, coloring by code, coloring/covering, and graphing with these dice game activities. 

Match-Up Activities and Puzzles
Covering skills such as fractions, money, place value, and telling time, your first graders will be so busy with these match up activities and puzzles that they won’t even realize they’re learning! 

Write the Room
With the warmer weather and nicer days, your students will be itching to get outside and run around as much as possible. Unfortunately, with spring weather comes rain, so there will surely be days where we’re stuck inside all day. But don’t worry, these math write the room activities are the perfect way to get your first graders out of their seats, all while continuing their learning! The April math write the room activities cover these skills: comparing numbers, counting coins, place value, and skip counting. 

Write & Wipe
Whether you choose to laminate or stick these centers in page protectors, your firsties will love using these write and wipe centers. The April write and wipe math centers cover skills like missing addends, expanded notation, making 10, and telling time.  

Download the April Math and Literacy Centers for First Grade Now!

A Dab of Glue Will Do Store 

A Dab of Glue Will Do Teachers Pay Teachers 

Bring on spring with these engaging April Centers for First Grade Math and Literacy.

Want an entire year of centers to use with your first graders?

Looking for more spring-themed resources?

Check out our curated collection of spring blogs, products, and freebies here!

Get your students excited about learning with these fun and engaging math and literacy centers for April. Designed to enhance skills and encourage creativity, these activities are perfect for your classroom!