Chalkboard Table

This year I am attempting to make my sand and water tables more collaborative. To accomplish this, I am placing this chalkboard table between the two so that they can make their observations, sort, or do some sort of work related to whatever goes into the tables at different points in the year. 

The best part was that I did not have to buy anything for this! I used the $10 IKEA table that I already had in my room, chalkboard paint for the top, and duck tape to finish the edges and make it a bit brighter. 

I look forward to having more pictures of this corner later once there are children utilizing the space!

Letter/Number/Sight Word of the Day

This year I attempted to talk to every student during centers time and practice letters, numbers, or sight words depending on the student. If there was one they struggled with it was his/her special letter for the day. I attempted using post-its to stick to the students or writing with washable marker on their hands but neither worked the way I hoped. Instead, I am going to use these basic badges with yarn to make them into necklaces so that students can wear the letter of the day for reinforcement that can be easily changed out by adding a different index card inside of it!

Centers Signs

Centers Signs:

To allow students to move through centers independently and so that there are never an unsafe number of students in a center, I created centers signs that have dots on them showing how many students are allowed in the center. I then attach velcro to the centers signs and students use their centers tickets with velcro on them to move to any center at any time as long as there is space.

If you're interested in using the centers signs that I created click here! 

I Like to Book

To support our young readers and writers, we did a shared writing activity where the students created a patterned book to share their interests. The students had a writing paper that said ___ likes to ____. They filled in the prompt and drew a picture to match the words. I then copied their words onto chart paper to use for shared reading. Students were able to focus on following a pattern, using pictures as clues, and using the beginning sound as a clue in reading. They loved reading it so much that I hung it in the library where they continued to read it over and over, practicing their one-to-one correspondence!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree

This palm tree was one of the most exciting centers in our classroom! It began as a tree used for whole group lessons where we sang as we added new coconut letters that we learned to the tree, matching lowercase letters as we did. After we learned all of the letters of the alphabet, the tree was moved to the back of a shelf to become a part of the Math and Literacy Center. The uppercase letters were glued onto the tree with velcro and the lowercase coconuts had velcro on the back, in a pocket near the tree so that students could complete the tree independently. They would sing as they completed the task and help one another find the correct letters! 

The coconuts are from here! http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/literacy/alphabet/food.html#.UddxZHBxJ4E

Manipulative Word Wall

This has been one of my FAVORITE parts of my classroom! The word wall in our PK classroom could be manipulated by the students so that they could take words down that they wanted to write when they visited the writing center. To create this, I attached felt to the wall at a level that all students would be able to reach. Next, all words and letter cards needed to be laminated and the rough side of velcro was attached to the back. Students then could take their names off the wall or any word that they wanted to use in their writing. One warning, students loved to take words down so it required some regular maintenance to keep it tidy.