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Centers

It is hard to fit everything in to a two and a half hour school day so I use centers to help cover material during play. I schedule centers into our school day three times a week. There are a variety of centers that I rotate through and many, many activities that each center can entail. Here's the list of centers that I use but there are others that could work better in other classrooms.
*Art Center (includes crafting, drawing, painting, coloring, stamping)
*Block Center (includes building with different types of blocks)
*Dramatic Play Center (includes home living, dress-up, vet's office, floral shop, bakery)
*Fine Motor Center/Sensory Center (includes water play, rice or sand play, playdough, tracing, beading, cutting, name practice)
*Literacy Center (includes letter matching, letter tracing, literacy games, sound matching, rhyming)
*Math Center (includes number practice, counting, math games)
*Reading Center (includes reading, looking at and enjoying books)
*Science Center (includes investigating and using tools and STEAM boxes)
*Writing Center (includes journals)
I space each center out around the room and each center only holds two or three students at a time.  Some weeks, I assign the centers and other weeks I allow the students to choose. I schedule my centers during the last fifteen to twenty minutes of our day. My students typically love and look forward to centers.
 Counting Stews are often part of our Math Center.
 STEAM boxes are at the Science Center.
 Counting Games are part of the Math Center.
 Tangrams and pattern blocks can be either Math Center or Block Center activities.
 Finding items to sort are sometimes part of our Fine Motor/Sensory Center.
 Hole punching fun can take place at the Fine Motor/Sensory Center and then the finished pieces can be used at the Art Center.
 Letter matching games belong in the Literacy Center.
 Building letters with Legos or other tools can be in the Literacy Center or the Fine Motor/Sensory Center.
 Letter finding, identifying and matching activities belong in the Literacy Center.
 At times, the Science Center has magnets, magnifying lenses and scales.
 The Writing Center contains our journals, crayons, pencils, and markers.
 Playdough and beads are fun at the Fine Motor/Sensory Center.
 Some Art Center activities happen at a table with lots of pieces and cutting or gluing.
 Number matching games belong in the Math Center.
 Other Art Center activities happen at the easel to allow for working on vertical surfaces.
 STEAM boxes can also work in the Fine Motor/Sensory Center.
 Reading tents, pillows, and stuffed animals fill our Reading Center.
There are different varieties of blocks at the Block Center and sometimes additional items are added such as pictures of building challenges or animals.

Our Sensory Table is at the Fine Motor/Sensory Center. It can hold different materials such as water, rice, shredded paper, sand, pool noodle slices, or Easter grass.

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