I originally made these to use as a dry erase book but have been using them as mini sensory bins instead! This week I put letter beads in a small bin with split peas and had the students find the letters and place them in the correct spot.
I also put a few paper booklets out so students could make a booklet after to take home if they wanted to.
I put the answer key on the back of the “cover” so students could flip it around and check their work when they were done!
I made poppies in 3 different sizes out of felt and hot glued a black button to the middle of each one. Then I cut out some doves from white felt as well. I added a sorting tray and 2 tins with a mini tong in each one. My hope was that they would sort the poppies by size, count the poppies and doves and use the tongs to strengthen their fine motor skills. Today was the first day they explored it but it was very popular!
You can grab this Remembrance Day reader for free by
clicking here or on the image below:
4. REMEMBRANCE DAY WORD CHART
Last week I had the Halloween word chart out and the kids LOVED drawing and labeling pictures from it, so I quickly made up a Remembrance Day one to put out this week! The kids have been doing such a great job drawing and labeling pictures at this centre!
You can also grab this word chart for free by
clicking here or on the image below:
5. LOOSE PARTS POPPY
I’ve shared this idea before but here is this year’s set up for the loose parts poppy centre! You can grab the FREE recording sheet by going to this blog post:
6. POPPY WREATH
I was inspired by the photo @wonderfullinquiry posted last Remembrance Day for our wreath this year! Every year each class presents a wreath at our Remembrance Day assembly. For this wreath I had the students draw a poppy in black crayon and paint it with red and black paint pucks. You can see the set up for that part below:
Then I cut out the poppies and glued them onto our wreath. Next we read “The Peace Book” by Todd Parr and we brainstormed words that make us think of peace. Then I had a few students come and write the words for us on black construction paper during centre time. Finally I glued the words on and we were done! It was one of the easier wreaths I have ever done and I love how it turned out!
7. SIGHT WORD SENSORY BIN
Here is a simple sensory bin (beautifully coloured rice made by my amazing ECE! She made it with the kids during one of our centre times!). After they made the rice she added the letter beads and the pipe cleaners and I added the wood slices with the sight words. We then invited them to read and build the sight words!
The letter beads can be found here: https://amzn.to/2XoB9tc
The wood slices were bought at a local independent dollar store, but it looks like the same packaging as the craft supplies sold at Dollar Tree so you might be able to find them at Dollar Tree as well!
8. TOSS IT, SAY IT, DRAW IT, LABEL IT!
My ECE partner made this centre with numbers on the plates a couple of weeks ago and since they love it so much (we had it out for math centres every day for 2 weeks and it was still full almost every day) we decided to keep the centre but switch it up to shapes in the middle! I had these shape stickers in my shape bin so I just stuck them on to white paper plates!
Students are invited to toss a pom pom, say the shape on the plate their pom pom lands on and then try to draw and label the shapes. I had students use the shape words from our math wall (they are on magnetics so they can take it off the wall to the centre) to help them label the shapes.
They did an amazing job here! One of the girls even wrote how many sides and vertices the shape has!
The shape word wall cards can be found in my 2D shapes pack here or by clicking on the image below:
9. PJ MASKS WORDS
I’ve had a hard time finding invitations that would entice most of my boy to write but lately I’ve overheard them talking about how much they love PJ Masks so I made up this little PJ Masks words chart and it was a big hit! So many friends who usually don’t visit the writing centre were here drawing pictures, labeling them and even telling and writing stories! Since this was such a big hit I asked them what other words they would like and they gave me a big list (including Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig) so I’ll have to get working on that to keep them engaged!
FYI (since many have asked) I am not sharing this file since most images from TV shows and movies are copyrighted. Sorry!
10. PATTERN HEADBANDS
I saw this great idea on
@fdk_learnandplay so we tried it too and the kids loved making pattern head bands!
11. SIGHT WORDS ON TABLE CLOTH + LOOSE PARTS
This was another popular centre! I just wrote sight words on a clear table cloth with a Sharpie and set it out with some loose parts and letter rocks. The students did a great job building the words!
12. SIGHT WORD TOWERS
I’ve been doing this activity for years but finally got around to updating my cards and adding a recording sheet. This centre is always a hit! The kids are invited to pick a card and then build a matching word tower. Then they can record their word tower on the recording sheet if they want.
If you want to grab the printables for this centre, you can find them by
clicking here or on the image below:
13. MAKE A LETTER BOOKLET
I saw this idea on
@fdk_learnandplay’s Instagram and loved it so I thought I would try it too and it was a big hit in our class! They loved making their own letter Aa book and then a Bb book and then so on!
I put out 2 mentor texts, some blank books and a word chart for each letter. You can find word charts for all of the letters by
clicking here or on the image below:
14. PIPE CLEANER + PAPER CUPS NUMBER SENSE CENTRE
I saw this idea on Pinterest (from
Planning Playtime) and my JK’s seem to like it a lot! It is a great activity for 1:1 correspodance, number identification and fine motor development. The pipe cleaners can be a little bit tricky to put in and they need to show some perseverance, but they did a great job!
15. PATTERN BLOCK LETTERS
I used these mats (the uppercase ones) at the beginning of the year so I thought I would pull these lowercase ones out for one of the weeks in November. The kids enjoyed these again!
That’s it for this month!
