Working Smarter, Not Harder

I'm sure you panicked that I missed my center post last weekend...I promise I taught my kids this week! I had to fly to Michigan for a funeral a few weekends ago, so we did the same centers two weeks in a row and we've just had a crazy few weeks!

I've realized that I am running myself to the ground introducing and keeping up with completely new centers every week. Last week, I traded in my number puzzles center for a Roll, Say, Keep center that is easily differentiated and can stay in the center all year. I'll trade out the cards as needed, but our letter naming/sounds cards are perfect for my class right now! My board was a freebie and I'm still using cards from the same download. As the year continues, I'll substitute letters with color/number words, sight words, simple sentences, etc. My kids did a great job with it last week and it makes me so happy that I won't have to teach them how to do that center every Monday!

Check out this freebie on TPT

My writing center last week was a Write the Room center. My students loved it, so I'm thinking I'll just switch out the cards and recording sheets every week. This week, we're going to practice counting and recording numbers. I found a really cute Halloween counting Write the Room center that I've printed and cut. The students will count the spiders/bats/pumpkins/cats and write the number on the appropriate line. I still have several little ones who are really struggling with writing numerals. The practice will be good for them! My favorite way to practice numbers is in shaving cream while we listen to the Dr. Jean Numeral Song. They sing that song all the time! Basically, any way that I can get my students to practice writing numbers that isn't just pencil to paper is great. Plus, they get to use clipboards. What could be better than clipboards?! 

Check out this freebie on TPT

My math center this week will be more counting practice. We've worked on five frames for several weeks and are ready to move on to ten frames this week. I wanted to make sure that they really understood fives as a set before we moved onto tens and I think they're ready! They'll be counting candy corn and matching the numeral to the tens frame. I printed these double sided this week. Cardstock is getting expensive! I'm going to put velcro on the back of each of the numbers and on each of the lines so that they can match the numerals. Velcro makes everything fun for 5 year olds ;)

Check out this freebie on TPT

My word work center is going to be more magnetic letters. My class really likes magnetic letters. We're practicing isolating the beginning sound in words and matching sounds to the corresponding letter, so I printed some more pages from the awesome magnetic letter pack I downloaded several weeks ago. They'll match the letter to the picture. It's a lot harder to record the beginning sound than it is to isolate it, but I think they can handle it. We'll adjust as we go with this one.

Check out this freebie on TPT

My other centers this week came from Miss Kindergarten's Fall Centers pack. They'll velcro letters and numbers in order and record them on their recording sheets. I also downloaded her sight word packs, which I'll use for their seat work this week. My plan was to start their computer center this week, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. I will keep the poetry center going this week, though! I'm going to start to introduce their poetry notebooks from Karen Jones. The best thing about this center is that they'll be able to do this one independently from week to week because the procedures will be the same!

That pretty much wraps up my centers for this week. I'm going to get some pictures of my kids actually doing the centers this week...I promise! I am so blessed by my students. I seriously have the best class ever. I might be biased, but I'm mostly just pretty sure they're the best ;)