teaching with centers

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teaching with centers
By Sandy

Marion-
I know what you mean. If given a choice, my kids used to pick Legos over a center involving matching upper and lowercase letters every time until I came up with my new system of workshops. At the core of this system
is a folder with items in it that reinforce the concepts we are working on. Each child has one of these folders and knows that the work in it must be completed by the end of the week. On the cover is a calendar for the month. Every day the children get their folder and color in the day's date according to how they feel; happy-yellow, sad-blue, tired-gray, mad-red, etc. You get the

idea. This extends our calendar learning one more step and can be interesting when you look at their interpretations of how they felt all week compared to how they acted like they felt. Inside the folder are simple, repetitive tasks like tracing and writing "E's and e's", finding and then circling all the "E's and e's" on a page, a color-by-letter picture using the letters and colors you have been working on, a sheet of paper with straight, zig-zag and/or curved lines for cutting practice, etc. The ideas are only limited by your imagination. I explain to the kids that I want them to experience all the workshops but that the things in their folder are really important and they must be finished before we go home on Friday. I have a portable bulletin board that has each folder item for the week displayed and completed by me, like answer keys. This gives them an overall idea of what needs to be done that week. We discuss the folder board Monday at our morning meeting. The first week or two, despite repeated reminders and warnings, a lot of the kids left many items till the end of the week. Playing catch-up on Friday wasn't much fun. Then they started trying to do everything on Monday, which wasn't much fun, either. Now they are pretty good about pacing themselves and have a real sense of pride and accomplishment when on Friday morning I say, "Georgie, all you need to do on your folder today is fill in your calendar and you are done for the week!" They look forward to the new items I put in the folders on Mondays and like to watch me at my desk coloring in next week's color-by-letter train or butterfly and tracing the vowels that will go on the folder board. The other workshops I have going during the week vary. I usually have 3 or 4 open for the week. We have computers, puzzles, gardening, Kindergarten Cafe (twice a month), play dough, art, board games, math using whatever manipulatives that were in our math lessons lately, housekeeping, and construction (Legos, Tinker Toys, blocks, etc.). I found some some small vinyl organizers at the 99 cent store that have 12 pockets. I velcroed them to the front of my desk and use them as a pocket-chart workshop with skill cards I make on the computer, matching a set of objects to the correct number, matching upper- and lowercase letters, letters to pictures, etc. Well, this is what has been working for me and it seems to be working for the kids. Hope I've been some help.
Sandy