Centers + a freebie

I change out my centers about every 2-3 weeks. I have 10 stations and kids go to one a day. I would love to have them rotate through more than that but it just doesn't work for me. So here's what's up for this round:

 The hole punch activtiy is from Crystal at Kreative in Kinder's Print and Punch unit. Check it out here. 
The upper and lower case letter match is from the Printable Princess's A Dab of Learning unit. Check it out here. 

 Roll and Cover and the ten frame practice is from DeeDee Wills Save My Ink: November Math and Literacy activities. I've found that adding markers to an activity makes my kids think they are getting to do something really special.
The Thanksgiving Clip it is a freebie on my TPT store. Check it out. 
Special Delivery game to practice numbers 1-6 is from DeeDee Wills's Fire, Rescue and Community Helpers Math Workstations. 
Corn and pumpkin comparison activity is from Kaci Hoffer's I am Thankful Unit.

Turkey cvc word activity  is from Kaci Hoffer's I am Thankful Unit.
Sentence writing activity is from Dee Dee Wills Super Sentences: Predictable Sentences for Thanksgiving 

Roll and Graph sight words is from my Wild About Words unit for Journeys. 
At word family memory game is from Marsha McGuire's Short A word family Word work galore bundle.

This is my first attempt at differentiating my workstations so we'll see how it goes. We're getting better about working on our own and enabling me to work with some groups. I would love for you to leave me a comment if you see something useful or have any questions.

Workstation Wednesday:Sensory Table

I'm trying to be more consistent with my blogging. So I've planned out some posts and some broad topics I want to blog about. Like Math Monday. And now Workstation Wednesday. These are things I'm working on improving in my classroom. Blogging about things helps me to think through things I'm doing. So this week I'm going to share about my sensory table. This is a new endeavor for me. I was inspired by my friend Marsha at Differentiated Kindergarten to use my sensory table. I've had this table since I started teaching kindergarten but it was full of sand which kind of grossed me out. It is a really nice table and had a really nice lid. So I just kept the lid on it the past few years. This summer I emptied the sand out and replaced it with colored rice. (You can read all about how to make your own colored rice and find a freebie by clicking here)
Here are a few things that I've been doing with my sensory table so far this year.

Here are the links for activities I mention above:
Julie Lee's Fall-Tastic Fun Math and Literacy Centers
Marsha McGuire's Back to School Math Workstations Galore
DeeDee Wills's All Sorts of Sorts

Those are some great resources that I've been using in my other workstations as well. So that's where I'm at right now with the sensory table. I'll leave the corn in through November. Then in December I'll be trying to find something new to put in it. I would love to hear what suggestions you have. Do you have a sensory table? What do you put in it?

Five for Friday on Saturday

I'm so happy for a Saturday this weekend. I enjoyed our weekend away last week but it is nice to be at home and not have any real plans either. I'm wish I had been able to sleep in but my brain was way too full. There are some things going on with our community and the sale of some land connected with our school. I have no control over any it so it doesn't do any good to worry about it. But it was going over and over in my mind this morning. Anyway, I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her 5 for Friday linky party.

I actually took several pictures this week which is amazing. Of course most of them are during center time because that's the only time I have a chance to take pictures. My literacy stations are going pretty well, Next week we're going to try 2 rotations a day. Math is a different story. I think I have them all taught now so hopefully they'll be able to do them this week. My biggest issues is that we do them in the afternoon after rest time. It is a little too rushed. I'm going to try a different schedule this week and see if that helps.
Anyway, here are some pictures from the week:

1. Sunset Sunday night. We were still at the beach on Sunday so I took this picture of the night sky. It was a great and relaxing trip (at least for me. Chris was busy in meetings.) Sunday was really nice. We spent most of the day at the pool.

2. Literacy center pictures:

 Our writing station has been focused on writing their names. I used an editable kit from Maggie at Maggie's Kinder Corner for the writing part. They had to make their names out of magnetic letters first.

Computer station is working on starfall.com. We're still working on how we work together in centers. It cracks me up that they are so far away from each other.

3. Math Stations:

 I finally got these pipe cleaners and beads together for this station. I cut a pipe cleaner in half and labeled them with masking tape. I used numbers 1-10 and made 2 of each number.

I introduced roll and cover games to the kids last week and they loved them. So this week I used these nursery rhymes ones from Jennifer Knopf. They are a freebie so check it out. They love this game. I think a couple of them might be ready for 2 dice.

3. Field Trip:
We had our first field trip this week. We have a partnership with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and every grade level K-8 goes on at least 3 park trips a year. The first one is Kindergarten helps get them familiar with the park and what jobs park rangers do. They got to see the rescue equipment and the cars.

This is one of my friends' kid. They all got to climb through the backseat.

4. Math Time

I bought Deanna Jump and DeeDee Wills's new math unit, Guiding Kinders: Math Workshop Unit 1 this past weekend. This picture is from one of the activities in it, Match it. The kids picked out a number and built a tower. Then their partner had to build a matching tower. The kids had a blast.

5. Friday was payday, iced coffee Friday, and 2 pm dismissal due to a car show.

Of course, somehow I still didn't leave school until like 5:45. But I got a lot of stuff printed out, laminated, copied and plans done for next week.
Be sure to head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to check out the other Five for Fridays.
I had planned on being back tomorrow with my visual plans but I left my hard drive at school and I had a freebie so we'll see. I would love a little love!

A wild hair

After blog stalking all summer and then starting my own blog, I have seen so many great things going on in classrooms and have changed a lot of the things that I'm doing. I am seeing a lot of success from these changes. The biggest thing I've implemented this year is slowly introducing Daily 5. I've really focused on just Read to self since January. My kids have built up their stamina to 15 minutes. They could probably go a little longer but that's about all I have time for. Last week I took them to the library to allow them to pick out 2 books for their book bags. We discussed a little bit about how to choose a book. I hope to introduce the IPICK chart this coming week. Today I introduced my kids to read to someone. It needs some work but they seemed to be excited about it and doing what they were suppose to be doing. My ultimate goal is to be able to fully implement Daily 5 next year when I have my kids for first grade.
I've been doing literacy centers this year but I get overwhelmed trying to fit it all in and trying to figure out what they are going to do each week. I really want my instruction to be more small group and less whole group. I want to implement math stations as well. So last week I got a wild hair that I would rework all that I've been doing this year.  I'm starting small.
This week my students only have 5 centers to go to. They are stamping, reading, computer, games, and writing. I then added a 15 minute block of time for math stations. I had every intention of starting this on Monday but it just didn't happen. I couldn't get my mind around what I want to do before leaving school on Friday and then Monday I couldn't get up early enough to get it going. So today, Wednesday we did some math stations for the first time. The kids loved having that time to practice some math. (I need to add a disclaimer. I haven't read the Debbie Diller book yet. It's been on my list for a while but I just haven't had the time. Hoping to get to it this summer.) When we finished our time, we discussed what kind of math we were practicing so they realized that it wasn't just about playing games. This is going to be a slow process of getting it all together and implementing it. But with the goal of having it ready to go by the time we start First grade and starting the school year with Daily 5 and math workstations, I think it's manageable.

So I created some new signs for my centers and math stations. The frames are from Graphics from the Pond. I've included numbers 1-8 and then some for literacy stations. I wanted them to be a little more uniform. If you can use them, please leave me some comment love. Math Station Card Have you ever completely changed things in the middle of the year or really almost at the end of the year? I'd love to hear about your experiences.

Problem Solving strategies

I should be working on report cards right now but I'm choosing to blog instead. I'm sure I'll pay for it later. There is so much going on right now. Report cards go out on Monday and I have conferences on Thursday and today I was out at a math training. I was not looking forward to going to the training because I have so much to get done and I had heard from a 4th grade teacher it wasn't great. But I'm so glad I went. It was really good. Susan O'Connell was the presenter. I didn't know anything about her but she has a book called Introduction to Problem Solving that we got a copy of. She offered a lot of strategies and practical ideas that I can take back to the classroom and use. That's my favorite kind of workshop. The biggest thing I took from her presentation was a method for teaching math. You pose a problem. Have the students think and talk with a partner then bring it back to the group. As you discuss the problem the key is in your questioning. These are good teaching strategies that I know. It helps to hear it again and see it in action.
She used some good literature to give context to the problems that you have the students explore. One of the suggestions was using the book If you give a Mouse a Cookie and have the students explore chocolate chips in a cookie. She posed a problem, then we explored some, came back together and created a chart, then offered some games to play to practice fluency. I loved this idea of tying in problem solving with literature. The wheels in my head are turning on how I can use this in the classroom with books that we're reading in class.
I'm still processing all that I learned but it has me questioning some things about my teaching. We adopted a new math textbook this year and there are lot of people complaining about it. We have so many new things going on: common core, new teacher evaluation and then this textbook. I try not to get tied up in a textbook. I try to use it as general guide and then go from there. Now that I've got these new problem solving ideas and strategies to think about, I think I'm going to find myself moving further from the textbook. I've already been thinking of tweaking things I have been doing with reading. I would like to incorporate some daily 5 but the only way to do that is to cut something out. My time is so limited in the class. I don't know much about daily 5 but I'm hoping to explore some over Christmas break. It will probably mean changing the literacy centers I've been working on. I try to be fluid and change what needs to be changed depending on my student's needs. The literacy centers are wearing me out a bit. I'll think that my kids are getting into a routine and we're making improvements and then they seem to forget everything they know. Maybe I just need to simplfy things and the Daily 5 seems to lend itself to that. Of course all I know of daily 5 is seeing other bloggers.
I have some questions for my blogging friends:
Do you deviate from your prescribed textbook or do you stick to it?
What's the best resource on Daily 5?
How do you balance it all? I would love to seem people's schedules if you're willing to share. I want my classroom to be a place where kids are exploring as they are learning. I want learning to be fun and meaningful.

Peek at my centers this week!

Last week was the first time, I had my students go to two different centers a day. It went much better than I anticipated. The goal is to have 16 centers and only have to change things up every two weeks. I only do centers 4 times a week. Fridays we usually do different kinds of centers or science activities. Currently I have about 10 centers going and I'm about to add 2 more. I have been trying to add them a little at a time. So here's what we're doing this week with a few freebies thrown in there.
1. Play dough center - I've been having the students make different letters and words. I have a recording sheet in a previous post but I'm noticing I need to change it up a bit. So this rotation, I'm going to add some cookie cutter letters and have them make their popcorn words that way. We'll see how it goes. You can click here for a copy of the recording sheet I made. You could use this if you use letter tiles or some other way for students to make words.
2. Stamping center - I've updated it using new sight words and some color word sheets from Work Smart Not Hard in Kindergarten. 
3. Math Game - Right now they are just working on using counters to make different combinations of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. They shake the counters and then draw it on a whiteboard. Eventually I'll add a recording sheet but right now they are still exploring.
4. Math Exploration - They are going to be making a number book from Fran at Kindergarten Crayons. I found it this summer and can't find the exact post. She has awesome things if you haven't checked her out. The kids will use bingo counters to make the numbers in ten frames.
5. Promethean Board - They do a center of flip charts that we've already worked on as a class.
6. Computer - They can go to www.starfall.com or another game we have a license with.
7.Reading corner - Surprisingly enough my kids love to go to this center and I have nothing too special over there. I have some pointers they can use to find words they know and big books we've read. This week we have Mo Willems books and David Shannon books. Last week we were working on Mo Willems and this week it's David Shannon.
8. Listening center - I'm using an old ipod and they can listen to two different stories. I'm wanting to add a recording sheet element but I haven't had a chance yet.
9. Write the room - I created a sheet for the kids to use to record different words they find around the room. The get to use clipboards and wear silly glasses so they are happy. I would share the sheet but I haven't bought the license with scrappindoodles yet but when I do I'll be sharing it.
10.Art center - They are creating an i with scraps of paper and glueing them down.
11. Writing center - We are working on a class book to go with Don't let the Pigeon drive the bus. I made a sheet for the kids to add to and draw another vehicle. I also made a picture dictionary of transportation words.  Class book for Pigeon and Vehicle words
My last center was going to be a science center but it hasn't all come together yet. I have a "brain" in a jar they were going to draw and observe. I might still be able to get it together but we haven't modeled using the recording form yet and I usually like to model first.
That's the plan for this week in my classroom and my centers. Check back later this week to see how they went and maybe I'll remember to take some pictures.

Random peek at Ms. Kerri's Class

This week we tried a couple of different things. The first was the math journals from Mrs. Wills. I love love love them! If you haven't checked them out, you need to. If you click on her name, it will take you to a freebie at her site. I've bought both the August/September pack and the October pack. We're having fun with it and it doesn't take a lot of time. I bought some composition books from Dollar Tree and then made a simple label with their name and math journal. I did it a couple of weeks ago but I couldn't figure out the best place to store them. This week I came up with the genius idea to store them on their supply caddies at their tables. It makes it so easy to get them out and work in and put them away. My goal is to do about 3 a week. I like how Mrs. Wills has made them with a variety of math skills. Right now we're just working on simple numbers and colors. Next week we'll tackle some patterning.

After reading some of Literacy Work Stations , I reworked a few things with my centers (I hope to make them work stations one day but we're not quite there yet.) I worked harder on having mini lessons to discuss the expectations at the centers. We made charts for our Promethean board and reading center. Those two centers seem to be working better. Next week, I'm going to work on introducing a little more choice. In the math game center, they will have the choice between 3 games we've already played. I'm also introducing the see the teacher center. I'm going to try to work with one small group a day. Right now the kids go to one center a day and I'm hope we'll eventually be able to rotate but my sanity can't handle it yet.
I made some little letter books over the summer after being inspired by Fran Kramer's little folding books she does. I had every intention of using them the week we did the letter but they just weren't ready. But this week was a review week of m and a. They did the little books this week and they went really well. We reviewed our  circle maps of the letters and I'm trying to get them to use some invented spelling. It's going ok. Hopefully, they'll get the hang of it as we go on. Next week, I'm being evaluated the first time. (Tennessee has a new system. Every teacher gets evaluated at least 4 times.) It is a planning one so I turn my lesson plan in Monday and then on Wednesday my assistant principal is coming by for a visit. We're going to be working on writing. I'm crossing my fingers it goes well.

Anyway, here's a free copy of letter books for the letters m, a, s, and p.
What have you been doing in your class this week? I love to see others ideas and classes.

Centers verses Workstations

With my introduction to the world of teacher blogging, I've discovered a lot of new authors and books that I want to read. I'm currently reading Debbie Diller's Literacy Work Stations book.( and Ron Clark's The End of Molasses Classes) I am only a few chapters in and I already see things I need to change and work on. I would like to move more to workstations as opposed to centers. I love the idea of the workstation. While I've done some of the things Debbie Diller talked about. I'm trying to teach with the materials and then put them in the center but I realize I hadn't given enough instruction with my expectations. We had worked with play doh and the stamps before and they are doing well with those centers. They had also already sorted with the materials I had in the math exploration center so that one went well. But this week with adding a reading center, I had every intention of really talking about what they needed to do. I had books we've already read there and big books we had been using. I also had some wands and this is where I really messed up. I didn't give enough instruction with these wands or use them in instruction. But after reading this book, I'm starting to see the error of my ways and we'll do some mini lessons like Debbie Diller suggests.
I changed my promethean center this week too. I gave them the charts we had already used in class to work on. While some of them did well with it, there were some things they need some more instruction on. I didn't even think about how they didn't know how to move from one page of the chart to the next. So another mini lesson is coming their way. I'm always looking for ways to improve my teaching and make things run more smoothly in my class. Workstations are my goal but it will probably take us all year to get exactly where I want to be. This week we're continuing on with the same activities we had last week. But I have these mini lessons planned.
Monday - Reading center expectations. We're going to make an anchor chart and have some students model the behavior.
Tuesday - Promethean board expectations and mechanics of how to move from one page to another
Wednesday - Play doh center expectations and routines
We have a field trip on Thursday and Friday is our fun center days. Hopefully these plans will help me move more towards work stations. Check back later this week to see how it went. Do you do centers or workstations? Or have you even thought about the difference?

Literacy Centers and the Letter A

Next week we're going to be working on the letter A. While we have already gone over all the sounds and go over them everyday, our reading series (Treasures) is designed to focus on one letter a week. Last week was our first attempt at literacy centers and they went well. We also had a special rotation on Friday of centers related to the letter M and monsters. I would like to do a letter celebration every Friday. So this week is A and apples.
Here are our centers for during the week:

1. Play dough - Using the alphabet cards from Kindergals, my kids have been making their letters with play dough and then I'm going to add some sight words from Fran at Kindergarten Crayons and her sigh word packet. I'm adding a recording sheet this week. They have to highlight the letters they make. You can get that here.
2. Stamping Center - Inspired by  Work Smarter Not Harder, I made a name stamping sheet that some of them are still working on. You can get that at  an earlier post. I also added one I made with our sight words from this unit. You can get that here. 
3. Math Exploration - They are going to be exploring with unifix cubes. I've made some number cards that they can match with quantities of the cubes. We haven't done much counting with our math series and I feel like we need a lot of practice with those skills. So far in the math series, we've working on sorting and now position words.
4. Math Game - I bought Kreative in Kinder's dice unit on her Teacher's notebook. If you haven't checked out her stuff you should. She's great. The kids are going to play a monster themed one this week. Then on Friday for apple day we're going to play an apple themed one from her Apples unit.
5. Computer center
6. Promethean Board - a picture sorting flipchart. They will sort pictures of things that start with m and things that start with a. This will be a change from their starfall they have been doing.(I'll be posting my A flipcharts later this week so check back)
7. Reading center - This is the first time they are going to this center. So for now they're just going to read quietly on the carpet. We're going to talk about the behavior for the reading center and make an anchor chart to hang there to show them what to do. I'm hoping to incorporate the 3 ways to read a book I have been seeing all over blog world.
I've been trying to introduce a new center every rotation and make sure we practice the activities so the centers will go more smoothly. So this week we're going to get ready to start the listening center on the next rotation. I want to go over the procedures like turning the pages and pushing the buttons. I also want them to complete a listening sheet as a class first. 

Most of the apple centers we're going to do come from Kreative in Kinder's apple literacy and math centers. We're going to use her dice game, her alphabet matching game, and hopefully her apple poem for an art project. Be sure to check back at the end of the week for pictures of our activities.

Literacy Center Update

I'm participating in the linky party over at Clutter-free Classroom. Click back to check out the other peeks into their classroom. 

We started literacy and math center this week and it went really well. Of course it probably helps that 6 of my 17 students are out of the room at this time. I was worried because we've only had free choice centers up to this week and I wasn't sure how they would take being told what center to go to. On the second day of centers, one student told me he loved doing these activities. Which made me really happy. Now that I'm into them I see some changes that I'm going to have to make. My center work board is not very user friendly and some of my signs need to be redone. I have some centers in baskets and the signs were too big for the baskets. So with my favorite thing, scrapbook paper, I redid the signs and used the kids' pictures to show where they needed to go. (see my post http://mskerriandherkrazykindergarten.blogspot.com/2011/09/im-so-excited.html to see what they looked like.)This summer when I was originally planned some of these centers I wanted to have 8 centers that I traded out the activities done in the centers. I was going to have an alphabet center, sight word center, writing, math exploration, math game, promethean board, reading (this would include listening and big books) and computer. But I've rethought this a bit. This is what I'm thinking now:

• Stamping center - practice sight words
• Play doh center - currently we're working on letters. But we could do numbers and words.
• Writing
• math exploration
• Math game
• Reading
• Promethean
• Computer
• Listening
• Art

I also like the sensory tubs and fine motor centers I've been seeing so I might include those too. I'm working on teaching them the centers and will add one new one a week. This week we've been working on stamping, play doh, math exploration, computer and promethean board.  I would like eventually for them to do 2 a day but we just can't make that work right now.
I had decided this summer I wanted to have letter parties each week for our letter of the week. In reality, I think it's going to be fun center activities on Fridays. So, we're had some monster m centers this Friday. One center was a matching game found on someone's blog that I can't currently locate. They made their own monsters out of construction paper. They turned out really cute. An m book that I made. They had to use our circle graph from the week to complete the book. The last one was covering a M in marshmallows. They had a lot of fun. I'll be posting my A activities hopefully next Monday with a flipchart and apple/Aa centers. So check back.
Hers are some of their activities. They turned out cute. 

Classroom Update

So my big grand idea of starting centers this week didn't work out so well. But I think I've gotten them all introduced and we'll be ready to start them on Monday. That will probably be better for them to start them Monday and do the full five day rotation. The only kids I haven't had a chance to introduce stamping to yet are my ELL students. They have their pull out ELL time during center time. In fact, they miss a whole hour of literacy learning. I have to live with it. I hate that I won't really have them for any small group time.
The gear bags are working out pretty well. We've only used them once and it was a little chaotic but I think it will get better as we use them. It was way better than passing out all the materials one at a time. I finally finished my birthday display. It's from looking at lot of different displays.
Last night was Open House so I wanted to get as much finished as possible. . I'm loving my scrapbook paper bought at JoAnn's Monday. I've been using it for everything. I made the Hiss game on Kindergals. But instead of using the snakes as the backs of the cards, I used scrapbook paper.  I have a limited supply of ink and copies so the scrapbook paper worked pretty well. I tried to keep with an animal theme. Check her game out. It was free and my kids have really enjoyed. I realized after playing it with my afternoon games that I taught it totally different than Kim Adsit had created it. But it worked anyway. It is helping me see which kids have ideas about letters and which don't.
I introduced the kids to Pete the Cat this week. They loved the story but I was so disappointed that I could show them the video. It was blocked and when I tried to use the trick I saw on a blog that was blocked too. I'm going to try downloaded the video at home on my laptop and bringing it in. I have bought Fran's Pete the Cat unit and DeAnna Jump's unit. I love the ideas in both and plan on doing a little Pete the Cat each week for a while.
Overall my week was good. Most of frustration is subsiding and the kids are really doing a great job. They make me laugh and smile so much. Next week we jump into the meat of our reading series. The first three weeks of the Treasure series is slow paced and introductory. Next week it starts to move a little quicker. The series teaches a letter a week. I've already introduced all the sounds and I plan of reviewing them everyday but just focusing on the one letter. Check back Sunday or Monday. I plan to have some M resources. I'm debating about making my first unit to sell on TPT. I can't quite decide but I will definitely have some freebies.
Hope you have a happy happy Friday! We get out at 2 pm because of traffic from a car show so I plan on it being a great day!

Literacy Centers

One of the things I've been seeing a lot in the blogging world is literacy centers. This is something I have never been good at it. But I really wanted to try this year and with all the support in the blogging world I think I can do it. We've just been having play centers the past 2 weeks. I have been a little discouraged about starting some literacy and math centers because my kids seem so young and like they can't be independent. But after getting some inspiration from a variety of blogs, I think I'm going to try to introduce some learning centers this week. I need to work with some of the kids in a small group. My ELL students need some extra help with sorting in math and some of the students need some practice with holding their pencils and writing their names. I would also like to do some assessing at some point. So trying literacy centers will hopefully help that.
We need to do some work with our names and I love the idea of a stamping center where I  can just change out the words to stamp. So the first center I'm going to introduce to them is a word work stamping center. I've made a sheet to practice writing their names and then stamping them. (click here to get it) I was inspired by the stamping sheets on work smart not hard teaching kindergarten. Click her button to get some more stamping sheets. I plan to introduce it whole group and show them what to do and then pull them with groups to let them practice it while the rest of the class is having their center time. We'll talk about how to take care of the stamps and what to do with their work when they are finished. I'll introduce this one Tuesday and Wednesday.

The next center I'm going to introduce is a math game center. We're working on sorting and classifying and the vocabulary same and different. The math series provides some centers for the kids to use. I'm not crazy about all of them but the first one is a memory matching game. The kids have to find the matches that are the same. Again I'll introduce this game whole group and then we'll take the time to play the game with partners. 

 The third center I would like to introduce this week is some kind of alphabet center. I've already introduced them to the idea of using play doh to make letters. Last week we made the word can out of playdoh as a class. I got the letters from Kindergals (Click here to see their post). I've glued them to card stock and laminated them. We'll do a whole group lesson again to review and hopefully they'll be ready. The plan is to be doing these learning centers and some of the play ones on Thursday and Friday after spending Tuesday and Wednesday introducing them.

Wish me luck! If you have any hints or tips for starting literacy centers, be sure to let me know. I've been doing some research on the blogs. I'll update with pictures hopefully later this week to let you know how it's going.
Writing this post helped me to sort it out in my head what I wanted to do and gives me a little accountability to actually do it.. Another perk of teacher blogging.

Organize! Organize! Organize!

Inspired by all the teachers out there organizing their rooms using cute labels and great containers, I worked on organizing some things today. I got all my craft supplies where I can actually see what I have. Last year someone donated some sharpie  containers, so I used those to sort crafts and math materials. I wonder how long it will last. It seems like I always start my year this way and then by about half way through it's a mess again. Maybe I'll be able to make it a little longer this time. I also used the colorful fabric I bought at Wal-mart yesterday to redo my bulletin boards. I have one that I just never seem to know what to put on it. I've used it for student work before but its location is not great for that. I was searching different learning environment ideas and saw this idea of a graffiti board. You put a topic or question on butcher paper and post it somewhere for the kids to write or draw on. I liked the idea of having something functional so I'll be putting up the butcher paper on my new pretty bulletin board on Monday. Any suggestions for what the first topic should be?

I made some signs for my center areas. I want to try to be more intentional with my centers this year in kindergarten. I've never been able to make it work for me mainly because it seems to require a lot of planning and organization on my part. So I've been working on what they are going to be. My main learning centers are going to be

• Sight Word
• Math Practice
• Math Game
• Alphabet
• Reading
• Promethean Board
• Writing
• Theme Center

The students will do 2 centers a day for 4 days a week. We also have a housekeeping area, blocks, art, and other toys. I am going to make these the centers they can go to after they have completed their learning ones. The problem is certain centers get filled up and then there are arguments. So I created some signs and there are dots on them so they can attach a clothespin with their name on it when they get there. Once it's full, kids have to find other centers to go to. Hopefully it will work.

Click here to get your own signs.
Center Signs
If yo grab my signs, please leave me a comment to let me know you like them. Thanks.