8 Differentiated January Math Activities to Ring in the New Year for Upper Elementary

[Our January math activities are available for third, fourth, and fifth grade.]

With January just around the corner, we have everything you need to help make learning math fun and engaging while giving you time to relax and actually enjoy your winter break!

Start the new year strong by focusing on the math skills your students need to learn in a fun way. These 8 printable math worksheets are differentiated to save you time and make sure your students are getting what they need.

The new year is a great time for a fresh start with students. Routines will be familiar and quicker for students to settle in than in the beginning of the year. It’s also a great time to introduce something new or reset expectations that may have fallen by the wayside before break time.

These worksheets for 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade are easy to use to begin your math block and get students excited about learning. Or, save them for a substitute, use for early finishers, small group centers, or to help teach a concept you’re currently working on. The activities provide the simplicity and variety for you to use when and however you need as you support your students’ learning this year.

Let’s take a closer look at what January’s bundles include!

• Penguin Pattern Mini-books
• Marshmallow Mayhem Addition Game
• Geometry Jumble Crossword Puzzle
• Standing Snow Globe Craft
• Snowball Math Facts
• New Year’s Fraction Countdown Pennants
• Snow Day Sorting
• Guess My Rectangle: Area and Perimeter (3rd & 4th)
• Guess My Rectangular Prism: Volume (5th)

1. Penguin Pattern Mini-books

Tired of boring worksheets? Turn them into simple, kid-friendly booklets with adorable penguins. This page of math just got a whole lot more interesting. After students make their booklets, they will work through patterns of skip counting (3rd), following rules (4th), and input/output tables (5th). Each grade level also includes exit tickets for students to think critically about the patterns they notice.

This is also a great way to display student work while keeping your bulletin boards looking sharp!

2. Marshmallow Mayhem Game

A spin on the classic Connect Four game, students will have fun while practicing addition skills. In my own classroom, I love setting aside one day each week to put out several games for students to play in pairs. At the end, students share a skill they learned or improved during game time.

Teacher-Tip: Have students use whiteboards while they play to help add.

3. Geometry Jumble Crossword

Mathematical vocabulary is so important, yet easy to overlook as we try to ensure all standards are taught. This crossword puzzle takes common geometry vocabulary words and scrambles them up. This is also a great opportunity to look in a math text glossary  or a regular dictionary to help with spelling if needed.

*Game Idea: Make vocabulary flash cards. Call one student to the front and have them hold up a card that they can’t see, but the rest of the class can. Call on students to give clues about the word until the student up front guesses the word.

4. Standing Snow Globe Craft – Measurin

Yes! Another craft! Solve the measurement problems, color by number, and create a standing globe. Line them up on a counter to display. Or, if your students bring water bottles to class, have students set up their snow globes on their desks covering their water bottles.

5. Interactive Snowball Math Facts

If your students are like mine, they can never have enough fact practice. It can get dull though, so here’s an idea to bring a little life (and movement) to math fact practice. Have a math fact snowball fight. Well, not really a fight, but more of a friendly toss back and forth. 😉

Hand out one or two worksheets to each student. Have students crumple their papers. Yes, you read that right. Crumple those pages up to look like snowballs. Then toss them across the tables, or across the room. Do what you are comfortable with and you know your students can handle. Then, have every student pick up one page and set a timer for about 30 seconds while they complete as many problems as they can. Then, crumple and repeat. You can even set up a can for pages that are finished.

This is great because everyone feels comfortable joining in. Students can complete the problems in any order, and whether they complete 2 or 20 in 30 seconds doesn’t really matter.

6. New Year’s Fraction Countdown Pennant

What a great way to ring in the new year! These pennants are great for problem solving with fractions and really work on students’ reasoning skills. First students cut out the fractions, then arrange them on the pennants according to the directions. They should make sure they have a place for each fraction before glueing, because they might need to readjust as they go. Some fractions might fit in more than one place, while others have only one place they fit.

Once the fractions are sorted, students can glue, color, and cut. Hang them up and they will enjoy seeing their pennants as a reminder of what they can accomplish when they work hard this year.

Bonus for all grave levels: Reflections and Resolutions Pennant

7. Snow Day Sorting

Students create line plots and answer questions about data on these sorting activities. Using and interpreting data is an essential skill for students to master throughout the grades. Students will put their data skills to work as they need to make the line plots correct in order to find the correct answers to the problems below. There are several extra answers, so students should double check their work.

Extension idea: Have students take 1-2 of the extra answers and create a question about the data with the answer as the solution.

8. Guess My Rectangle (3rd & 4th Grade) and Guess My Rectangular Prism (5th Grade)

A game for two! This game is played like Guess Who? except students are trying to find a particular rectangle (3rd & 4th grade) or rectangular prism (5th grade). First students find area, perimeter, volume, or the shape’s dimensions. Then each player secretly chooses a shape. The players try to figure out the other player’s selection by asking yes or no questions. For example, a student might ask, “Does your rectangle have an area greater than 15 square units?” This will help eliminate all rectangles with either more or less than 15 square units. The first player to correctly guess the other player’s rectangle/rectangular prism is the winner.

I hope you enjoy these activities with your students as you settle into familiar routines in the new year. Be sure to check out the entire year bundle for your third, fourth, or fifth graders.

Happy New Year!

View the Grade Level Bundles

Purchase the bundles and save!

• Monthly themed games, puzzles, riddles, coloring, and more!
• 2 levels for differentiation
• BW & Color
• Answer Keys