It’s March, the luckiest month of the year (cue the little green footprints and golden glitter). And you’re in luck too! Because as you look upon those empty plan book pages wondering how you’ll make this month more fun and engaging than ever, you’ve stumbled upon a list of 11 of my favorite March themes for the classroom!
Get your favorite flair plans ready as you use these March thematic unit ideas to help you brainstorm lessons that are just right for your students and meet the academic objectives you’re tackling as winter recedes and spring approaches!
Here is a list of 11 March Themes that will help you fill your plan book fast!
Let’s start with the major March theme that often comes to mind first. Especially in the younger grades the St. Patrick’s Day holiday brings about so much excitement for students. I have fond memories of my own childhood creating fancy and extravagant leprechaun traps (ok ok.. they were usually tissue boxes with some Lucky Charms at the bottom, but they felt fancy at the time.) Don’t miss this FREE set of notes from Lucky!
Students love the mystery and fun surrounding the holiday. Check out some of my favorite activities here!
One of my favorite projects ever is this leprechaun St. Patrick’s Day project which started as an area and perimeter project. I differentiated it for some students as a counting and visual planning project, but it works either way. Basically students use grid paper to design a leprechaun house. It’s so much fun! You can check it out here (or here on tpt).
I also find that students are super excited about writing when it’s thematic so I have a ton of St. Patrick’s Day writing activities that I use during the first part of March.
I also have begun adding preschool resources, and I have a super cute and useful St. Patrick’s Day resource.
While this theme kind of connects to the St. Patrick’s Day resources, it’s another time of the year that we can use this topic to go in a couple of different directions.
First, you can kind of use this like a refresher for the gratitude thinking and writing you have done around Thanksgiving time.
The other thing you can begin to tie in is probability. It’s fun to play games where students start to explore probability and even through games “luck”. My first graders loved thinking about whether an accomplishment was based on luck, skill, or both. I liked the tie in that came naturally to that meta cognitive sort of thought process as well.
The rainbow theme goes nicely with the St. Patrick’s Day theme, but also blends well with units on weather, observation, and even spring (which also comes up this month!) I love incorporating Rainbow science activities where students explore and observe changes. Check out this set of activities I put together. Read more about it here.
Whenever there are seasonal changes it’s a great opportunity to introduce a theme. I always start with Goodbye Winter , Hello Spring (here on tpt) It’s also wonderful because any of the thematic spring resources you use are still relevant for many months, so they are useful for a long window of time. I find, for example, when I am leaving sub plans, I usually have a set of emergency plans that are for each season. This way students aren’t bored with lessons that are totally disconnected from everything else that’s going on in the classroom.
Another great way to watch and learn about life cycles is by having caterpillars in your classroom. We love watching the caterpillars grow and change and eventually go through metamorphosis. It’s incredible to me every single time. It’s also a great time for students to learn to make observations, connect the informational text that they are reading with real life changes that they can see. It definitely lends itself to an applied vocabulary since student read words and then use them as they talk about what they are seeing happen.
It’s also a great tie-in for some color by code math practice (you can find that here!)
There are SO many great stories about ducks, and I feel like all the duck and pond life things are perfect for this time of year! Whether you’re reading Make Way for Ducklings, The Ugly Duckling (here are some story activities), Duck at the Door … there are just so many great ones.
This is a wonderful topic to tie that paired text connection in with. Read stories, learn about ducks, and then synthesize that information as they write and share.
Spring leaps us right into noticing animals and life all around us. Especially if you talked about hibernation during the winter months. it’s fun to see some animals, like rabbits appear in the spring. In our yard we tend to see baby rabbits grow almost every year.
Whether you’re learning about the life cycle of a rabbit, or reading rabbit themed stories, students really love this topic. Tops and Bottoms – Adapted and Illustrated by Janet Stevens (Here’s a link to a read aloud version) is one of my favorite stories to read this time of year.
I also created these printable emergent readers. There are four of them in all and two are informational and two are fictional. They are great for independent work, substitute plans, or to send home with students to share what they have learned with their families.
You can also get this free printable cut and paste word building activity here!
Any time the season changes so does the weather. I think the transition from winter to spring is a great time to discuss and learn about weather since everything changes so quickly. We often see different types of precipitation and storms. I got a whole set of beginning readers from Scholastic one year that my students loved and they wrote all about different types of weather (of their choosing) using this extreme weather research companion. (or here on tpt) By this time of the year I feel like they are just hungry to research and learn since it’s something we’ve been practicing all year long.
I have always loved frogs. Have I mentioned that my oldest kiddo’s nursery was once frog themed? I have fond memories of catching them and setting them free as a kid in the little stream next to our town library.
Anyway, this is a great theme for students this time of year because it’s a wonderful time to learn about the life cycle of a frog since it can happen right before your eyes! If you’re able to, you can even bring this life cycle into the classroom, which is super fun.
Anytime students are learning about something new, I find that they are super motivated to write as well! Here are some of my favorite Frog Writing Activities. (here on tpt)
It’s also the time of year that my first graders were getting super excited to read chapter books, so our good friends Frog and Toad made an appearance every year around this time (Check out the book studies here).
March is Women’s History month! You can do so much, even with your youngest learners to celebrate the accomplishments of women. I have written about some of my favorite books with strong girls as main characters here. Zoey and Sassafras is one of my favorite series for first and second graders.
There are also a bunch of great picture books like The House that Cleaned Itself, The Girl With A Mind For Math and more! I have some freebies for these books linked here.
I know that some schools spend time discussing Easter and others don’t. I have often used Easter themed word problems and discussed the student experience with traditions and fun around Easter. I should also mention that Easter is sometimes in March and other times it’s in April. If you want to grab those word problems, they’re a great sample of my spiraled review word problem journals. Grab that freebie here!