13 Spring Center Ideas for Kindergarten (with 2 Freebies!)

March 6, 2025

1. Spring Sky: Find & Trace/Cover/Dab

I made 2 versions of this sensory bin, so please use the one that would fit the needs of your students best! In the first version (shown above), students are working on identifying letters (there are uppercase only, lowercase only and cards with both included), finding the matching letter on the mat (both an uppercase and a lowercase version is included) and tracing it! They keep going until they’ve found and traced all of the letters.

I used rice as the base (I dyed it blue with food colouring! I followed the instructionss on Busy Toddler’s website here) and added some cotton balls (I thought these would be cute as pretend clouds!)

The second way you can play this is to use the CVC cards! Students will grab a card, read the word, find the matching image on the mat and cover it. I used these magnetic chips and wands here but you can use any small manipulative you want!

There is 2 sets of the CVC version. I made one with “easier” words (more common words like cat, mom, bus etc.) that you see above and a second version with less common words mixed in for the kids who could use a challenge (words like bud, rot, sag, dam etc.) Again, please choose the set that you think would best fit the needs of your group!

All of the activities shown in this post are in the Kindergarten Spring Centres: Literacy, Math, Fine Motor & More” here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kindergarten-Spring-Centres-Literacy-Math-Fine-Motor-More-13080717

2. In the Woods Small World Play Centre (Freebie)

Since the arctic small world play was such a hit, I decided to make a spring version! The free animal trace and write cards match the animals in the Safari Ltd. In the Woods Toob (I grabbed mine from Michaels! Here’s the link.)

My own little guy (who is currently 4) LOVES small world play, animals and story telling so I know this will be right up his alley. Plus he really liked the trace and write cards from the arctic small world play so I’m hoping he will like these just as much🩷

I set out the animals with blue flat marbles (I’m thinking he could use these to build rivers and ponds), wood stumps (I already had the thinner disks, I think I had originally bough them from Dollar Tree. The thicker ones (you can’t see those very well as they are in the top right corner) are from Dollarama), some flower beads and green pom poms (I thought these could be little bushes). I can’t wait to see what he creates with this! If I had some I would have thrown in some little rocks/pebbles but I seem to have misplaced them and my outdoor pebbles are still covered in snow😅

If you would like the matching trace and write cards, just click on the button below to grab them from my Google drive!

3. Plant a Garden: Number Sense & Sorting Centre

This one combines 2 math skills and dramatic play all in a fun sensory bin! To set this one up, I added some black beans for the base, attached the vegetable cards to clear plastic cups and added pom poms to the cups that matched the colours (these are meant to be seeds). Then I added tongs, a mini shovel and the “Plant a Garden” cards!

Students simply pick a card and plant a garden following the instructions on the card! Once they are done they can sort the pom poms back into the cups and try a new card. My own little guy LOVED this one and has been coming back to it for weeks now!

4. Watering Flowers: Vertical Pre-Writing Lines

Do you have some kiddos who still need lots of practice with pre-writing? This is so common in JK (Pre-K in the states!) and fresh opportunities help make these activities more enticing😉 Some kids also really like having a job or mission so I tell them, “The flower won’t grow without the marker! Help the flower get water by tracing the line with a blue dry erase marker!” I know it sounds corny but I swear there’s always a few kids who are super motivated by this😆

5. Spring Themed Cutting Tray

Scissors skills is another skill most Kindergarteners need practice with all year! These cutting strips (the winter version can be seen in this blog post) are refreshed with spring clip art and I also made some full page versions so it’s lower prep! As usual I copied them on coloured construction paper to make them more enticing✨

6. Roll, Say, Find & Cover/Trace/Dab

Again, these were popular in the fall and winter pack so I made sure I included them in the spring version too!

Like the ones in the fall and winter packs, the letters and words are editable in PowerPoint if you need to practice different letters/words!

Students can play by themselves or with a partner. They can roll the dice until they cover their entire mat or take turns rolling with a partner and whoever fills their mat first is the winner!

7. Spring Build & Trace

Here’s another one that was popular in the fall and winter packs so I made sure to make a set for spring as well! Students can use the mats to help them build the spring item and then trace the word at the bottom to practice letter formation! Building with snap cubes is a great way to strengthen the finger muscles needed for pencil grip and letter formation!

8. Spring Words Chart + Mini Book

This is another staple! We love swapping out our word charts as holidays and seasons come along and setting out the mini books that go with them. The students can use the mini book to draw a picture, label it, write a sentence using the word or to help them complete their mini book! The prep is low and since we have usually already done this activity before, the kids know what to do and it’s one less centre to explain🩷

9. Spring Dab & Read

My students always love bingo dabbers so this one is a must every season and holiday! And it’s such a simple, no-prep way to work on letter formation (without a pencil!) Students start at the image and then dab the dots to form the letter. They can be used with sticker dots and self-inking stamps too if you want to mix it up a bit!

10. Counting Rain Drops/Lightening Bolts (1-20)

A fun way to practice 1:1 correspondace! You can choose to set these out with rain drop number cards or lightening bolt number cards and have students pick a card and practice making the number on the mat!

For the rain drops you could use any small blue manipulative such as pom poms (shown above), snap cubes and pony beads (which are great for bigger numbers because of the smaller size plus they force kids to pinch them to pick them up and work on their pincer grip😉).

For the lightening bolt I cut up yellow and gold pipe cleaners and bent them to make them look like lightening bolts! ⚡⚡⚡

11. My Spring Patterning Mini Book

I always have a few kids who are obsessed with mini books so I try to have at least one mini book out at all times! Here is a spring themed version of my patterning mini books! Again, there are many options for easy differentiation!

12. Butterfly Bead Patterning (Freebie)

I found these butterfly beads that I had bought at Michaels previously (here’s a link) and knew they would be a great manipulative for patterning… but I couldn’t find clip art that looked like these butterflies so I thought I’d keep it simple by just using matching coloured dots!

Students can match and extend or simply extend using the butterfly beads (or any other manipulative you have in pink, lime green and teal!)

Grab these cards for free by clicking on the link below!

13. Spring Measure & Record

Measure & Record is another centre that is always popular and it works on so many skills at once (non-standard measurement, fine motor, 1:1 correspondence, number formation). It’s a nice low prep centre too, simply cut out the cards and set them out with snap cubes and the recording sheet!

Again all of the printables shown in this blog post (that aren’t freebies) are in my “Kindergarten Spring Centres: Literacy, Math, Fine Motor & More!” pack on TPT. Click here or on the image below if you want to grab it to use in your classroom🥰