Who’s ready for an April Activity Round-Up?! As someone who LOVES springtime, I’m excited to share some of my favorite lessons and centers to use during the month of April. These April activities are designed to beat boredom, reduce your workload, and help you sail toward those final weeks of the school year. Ready for all the details? Let’s dive in!
Where to Start with April Activities
Ok, first things first – let’s assess where we’re at and what needs to be on your lesson plan this month! For many of us, April is one of the final months of the year. Many schools are done right around the end of May, while others will be finishing up in early June. Either way, this means that your April activities need to pack a punch when it comes to reviewing everything you’ve learned this year.
In my classroom, I love this time of year because my kiddos are SUPER independent by April. This means I can spend longer periods of time with my small groups, and count on students to stay on task. While the end of the year can get a bad rap for being hectic and lacking engagement, it doesn’t have to be a total circus. In fact, with fun and exciting activities on your lesson plan, this might be your best month yet!
1. April Lapbooks
Have you tried using lapbooks in your kindergarten classroom yet? These little wonders are among my favorite teaching tools of all time because we can cover so many fun topics! Plus, they facilitate fine motor skills and independence, which we all know is a must in the primary grades. If you’re new to lapbooks, don’t worry! These smaller-sized interactive notebooks come together in a snap! We make our lapbooks out of manilla folders and then fill them with foldables and writing prompts on our topic. Our April activities always feature a few lapbooks! This month our topics include:
- Butterflies
- Earth Day
- Easter
- Insects
Find all four of these in the April Lapbook Bundle. I use lapbooks to target important skills like writing and using scissors, while also learning about a new topic. I like to use one per week if we have time to squeeze them all in! To start, I will usually read a book on our topic and then we dive into creating our lapbooks. Each one has tons of different options to include, so these are totally customizable for your students!
My favorite reason to use lapbooks is the visual record they leave. As you learn and expand on a topic with your students, they’ll be completing activities and prompts to document it. And please note that even if you don’t have a set unit for these topics, the lapbook activities can become your trusty guide. Each one covers all the essential details for the topic, you can rest assured knowing that your students will get just what they need!
2. Math and Literacy Mats
As a busy teacher with a never-ending prep list, I am always looking for centers to add to our April activities that won’t take a ton of time to prepare. These Spring Math and Literacy Mats are the perfect way to ensure my students get practice with important skills in a fun way! Plus, just print, laminate if you choose, and go! It doesn’t get simpler than that, right?
These mats are designed to work on letter and sound recognition, number recognition, and subitizing. We all know how essential these skills are, so it’s always been important to me to make sure we have some games that facilitate them in April. There are 40 different mats included, so there is plenty of variety to differentiate as needed.
Personally, I find these to be really helpful as a morning tub activity. I like to use the full-color options and laminate them. Then I’m able to use them again and again each year. I place the mats and tub of snap cubes on the table and kiddos get to work as they trickle into the classroom. Mornings can be hectic, but saving a place for these in my April activities helps calm any chaotic morning shuffle!
3. Shape Games for April
Do your students need extra practice with 2D shapes? I know that mine usually do! This time of year is essential for reviewing important skills and concepts, so I like to include these shape games in my April activities. These games are super fun for students, easy to assign for centers, and many of them work well for partners as well! Kiddos will play a variety of fun games such as:
- BUMP
- BINGO
- Match It!
- Dominoes
- Spin and Cover
- Count and Graph and more!
Each of these games features a fun, bug theme that goes along perfectly with the Insects lapbooks we work on throughout this month. Insects are a popular topic among my students, so they’re usually pretty excited to play these games! I like to prep these ahead and laminate them for durability. That way we can pull them out whenever we want to get some fun and engaging practice with shapes in!
4. April Activities for the Writing Center
My writing center is my favorite place in my classroom. I love switching it up from month to month to reflect our theme. In April, our writing center activities are all about Easter, plants, baseball, bugs, community helpers, and Earth Day! There’s so much variety in these activities that I’m able to use them all month long to encourage writing among my students.
These activities can be used in a couple of ways. If you have a dedicated writing center in your classroom, you can add a few new activities each week. You can also use the pages as assignments for independent work time, whole group writing blocks, and even homework! There is a wide variety of activities included to meet a range of skill levels. Whether your students are just getting started with printing letters and words, or ready to write their own sentences, there is something for them in this resource!
5. April Pattern Block Activities
Pattern block mats are another low-prep hero when it comes to planning April activities. These are another print-and-go option that your students will love! Plus, they are versatile too. Use them for center time, an emergency sub tub, and those odd times in the day with a few extra minutes to fill.
These Spring Roll and Match mats are a student favorite! To play, students will roll dice and count. Next, they find and name the corresponding shape for the number they rolled, find a pattern block of the same shape, and place it on the mat. Students will keep rolling and matching until the mat is full. When the mat is complete, the student will count how many of each shape and write it in the box. This activity is complete when all of the shapes are covered and a spring picture is revealed!
This activity comes with another option, making it even more versatile. Use the full-color mats with pattern blocks to match, or use the black and white version with crayons and have students color them in as they roll. This is a print-and-go resource that saves the day in our room often! If you love pattern blocks as much as I do, be sure to check out this resource too! These mats follow the same general idea, except students will use a spinner instead of dice.
6. Spring Math Center Worksheets
Do you ever find yourself in need of some no-prep, print-and-go worksheets? Me too! The thing is though, I don’t want my kids working on fluff either! These Spring Math Center Worksheets are the no-prep option of my dreams! They take (almost) no effort to use in my classroom and touch on important math skills my students are working on.
These pages help students work on counting on and addition with engaging color-by-code pages they love. Each page features a spring picture that is revealed as they solve each problem. Students will look at the code at the top of the page to see which number they are looking for. When they find that number combination by counting on, they color the space with the indicated color. When all spaces have been colored, the hidden picture will appear! I love using these during center time, but they are great for fast-finishers and your sub tub too!
7. Snap Cube Games
If you’ve been around here a while, you’ve probably seen my love for snap cubes! I just can’t help it, they are the most versatile manipulative in my opinion and kindergarten students love them! I think this is because they offer a hands-on way to practice math skills as they build and stack. In our April activities, we use a couple of different snap cube mats for math practice.
The first are these Roll, Snap, and Graph pages. These mats focus on subitizing and graphing. Students will use dice to roll a colored snap cube. Students will then find a matching snap cube and place it on the mat. Next, they color in one square on the graph recording sheet beside the matching color. Students will keep rolling, matching, and coloring their graph until the mat is full and a spring shape is revealed.
Another option we like to use are these Roll, Snap, and Frame Mats. These are very similar to the ones mentioned above, except students will fill in a tens frame as they go instead of a graph. Both of these skills are essential for my students, and I love that we can target them in such a fun way with these activities!
8. Low-Prep Math Centers
Last, but not least on this April activities round-up are these I Spy Counting Games. These math center activities were designed to allow you even more options for low-prep math activities. Included in this set are 5 different activities that require minimal effort to use:
- Count and Graph Worksheets
- Count and Tally Worksheets
- Task Clip Cards
- Cut and Paste Counting Worksheets
- Count and Color Worksheets
Students will use each of the activities included to work on counting objects to ten. Each page uses a fun, spring theme too, so they’ll fit in perfectly with your April activities. These activities are a wonderful way to focus on one-to-one correspondence and number sense skills. I like to use these for math centers, individual work assignments, morning bins, and early finishers! I know you’ll love being able to print these off and hit the ground running!
April Activities Made Easy!
These April activities and centers make teaching and reviewing important skills and concepts a breeze. Since many of them are low-prep, or no-prep, I can quickly and efficiently prepare for the month. My favorite thing about these activities though is how they hold engagement. As the year winds down and we work on our final review, these games and centers are a surefire way to capture student interest and keep it!
You can find all of these activities and many more in my TPT shop! Take a peek if you’re looking for more fun ways to engage your little learners this spring!
Save These April Activities
Pin this post on Pinterest to keep track of these fun and engaging April activities!
