The winter season is CRAZY between all the holidays. The classroom would not be complete without winter centers! Your students are just as antsy as you to have winter break and it can challenging to keep them engaged. Before springtime hits is the time when most teachers are brushing up on skills and concepts usually on standardized tests. Teaching those common skills doesn’t have to be boring!
Having centers is a great way for kids to practice concepts such as learning about place value, categorizing parts of speech, or finding which sentences are complete or not. Centers are a great hands on way for students to practice all those standards you need to review, but in a fun way.
All my winter centers are sold either individually or as a bundle to help you save money! I highly recommend printing on cardstock and laminating to ensure durability and long-lasting centers that will last for years! They can be used in small groups or individually.
These centers do take time to set up and cut out, but not only will you have fun hands on centers for actual center time, these would also be great for indoor recess during those too cold to go outside days!
ELA Winter Centers
With Snowball Complete and Incomplete Sentences, students will read each sentence and then decide if it is a complete or incomplete sentence. They then place the snowballs in the correct pail and then rewrite five incomplete sentences to make them complete.
With Skate Around the Contractions students match each broken ice patch to create a contraction. There is a recording sheet to write the contractions as well as a sentence practice sheet where they will write sentences using the contractions that they found.
This adorable center Penguin Synonyms and Antonyms is great for practicing matching synonyms and antonyms. Each penguin has a word on its stomach and the students find the matching hat (antonym) and matching ice block (synonym).
Can you tell I love penguins!? Penguin Parts of Speech has 80 different penguins that match with an ice patch that is either a noun, verb, adjective or adverb.
Homonyms (or multiple-meaning words) can be tricky to teach but don’t have to be with Multiple Meaning Mittens. Students match each mitten with a definition to the correct basket. There are directions included to make this center even MORE hands-on!
Math Centers
Snowman Place Value is a fun center where students build a snowman by matching the parts of a snowman that has numbers in numerical form, expanded form, and written form.
Snowball Even and Odd has students solve equations with up to three digits and place them in the correct pail based on if the answer is even or odd. This is also great practice for students to solve 3 digit problems that may involve regrouping in the horizontal way!
One of the best things about winter is being able to come in from the cold and get a cup of hot chocolate! Bring warmth and tastiness into the classroom, while teaching time, with Hot Chocolate Time. Each mug contains an analog clock on it and matches with up to 2 marshmallows written in digital or written time! Contains times for every five minutes!
Arctic Addends is a fun center for students to practice finding missing addends. Students will match each igloo containing a number with the equation on the ice patch where the missing number will fit.
You can get all of these centers individually or save with the bundle and have ten math and ELA centers for winter!
More Seasonal Blog Posts
