Looking for fun learning activities for March? From Read Across America Day to Pi Day to the first day of spring, there are endless activities that you can provide for students in your afterschool program. Check out the dates below and explore the following activities and resources to fill up your calendar for the upcoming month!
- March 2 - Read Across America Day
- March 4 - National Grammar Day
- March 7 - World Book Day
- March 8 - International Women’s Day
- March 10 - Daylight Saving Time Begins
- March 14 - Pi Day
- March 17 - St. Patrick’s Day
- March 20 - First Day of Spring
- March 30 - Pencil Day
1. Read Across America Day is a day to celebrate reading and promote a love for it in students. To participate, host a book swap in your afterschool program. Encourage students to bring in their favorite books, display them on a table or bookshelf and allow them to choose a book to read for Read Across America Day. If students love this idea, keep the book swap going until they have read every book!
2. National Grammar Day is the perfect time for students to practice good grammar! Celebrate with a game of Play the Bag. To get started, gather 8 brown bags and label each one a different part of speech, such as a noun, pronoun, adjective and verb. On index cards, write down 10-20 words for each category, and place each card in the correct bag. Then, challenge students to take a card from each bag and form a sentence. The first student to form a grammatically correct sentence wins!
3. Women have made history in every area of society, from politics, STEM, sports and even art. For International Women’s Day, help students celebrate past, present and future history-makers with coloring in sheets, activity booklets, role model case studies, video materials and more. Visit the International Women’s Day website for downloadable resources to make this day a huge success.
4. Pi Day, celebrated on March 14, is the perfect holiday for budding math enthusiasts! Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, and the number is never-ending. To explore the irrational number, students can create a pi skyline! Using graph paper and colored pencils or markers, they will simply graph the digits of pi using a bar graph format. Once finished, have them color in the sky to complete the skyline.
5. Slime is all the rave these days. And your students will love making this simple St. Patrick’s Day slime recipe from Little Bins for Little Hands! To make the slime, you’ll need the regular ingredients - like Elmer’s Washable Glue and liquid starch - plus others like green food coloring and St. Patrick’s Day confetti. Even better, slime doubles as science and sensory play!
6. One of our favorite St. Patrick’s Day activities is Catch a Leprechaun! This fun, problem-solving activity challenges students to build a leprechaun trap using scrap materials and craft supplies. The trick: there are no instructions; students have to use their imagination to construct their trap! Once completed, have each student demonstrate how their trap works and allow the others to vote on the best one. For even more fun, have them sketch a plan to attract a leprechaun to their trap!
7. March 20 is the first day of spring, and we’re too excited to pick just one activity! From exploring rain to making butterfly wings flutter, the activities below incorporate science, art, engineering and more.
- Build a bird’s nest
- Make it rain to explore evaporation and condensation
- Use static electricity to make a butterfly’s wings flutter
- Dye carnations
- Have a spring scavenger hunt
- Try these spring STEM activities
It doesn’t stop there! We have even more spring-themed activities for students on Pinterest.
8. March is National Nutrition Month, and it’s the perfect opportunity to promote healthy eating habits in your program. Check out 7 Ways Program Leaders Can Encourage Healthy Eating for activity ideas, including starting a garden and exploring the science behind healthy eating.
9. Another fun way to celebrate National Nutrition Month is to take a field trip to a local farmer’s market and provide hands-on activities to deepen learning and make the most of your visit. Other resources to check out are the From Farm to Table Book Series - which introduces students to a rainbow of fruits and vegetables - and Fabulous Food: 25 Songs and Over 300 Activities for Young Children - which helps them gain an appreciation for healthy foods while also promoting literacy skills such as comprehension, letter knowledge and phonemic awareness.
10. Who says Pencil Day can’t be fun? There are a number of activities that students can try on this unusual holiday. For example, this magic pencil trick from Buggy and Buddy demonstrates how the polymers in plastic zip bags keep water sealed in even after being punctured by a sharp pencil. Students can also explore light refraction with just a pencil and glass of water. The possibilities are endless!
Use these activities to plan ahead and guarantee of month filled with fun and engaging learning activities for your students.
