Blast from the Past: Neat Center Ideas

Hey y'all! In honor of Throwback Thursday, I thought I'd share with y'all a post from two years ago that features a lot of neat center ideas. I had just presented at my first conference when I wrote this post :)  My session included first grade center ideas so you'll find a lot of them in this post. Enjoy! :)

New Literacy Centers

Wednesday I presented at the Northeast Alabama Early Childhood Conference. I had so much fun and got to meet the fabulous Kim Adsit.

I presented my Literacy Center Ideas. I created a few new ones that I thought I'd share with y'all today.

It's Peanut Butter and Jelly Time Sight Word Center Activity

I just love this clipart! In this activity, the student or students will pick a PBJ sandwich from the sandwich container and color in one box under the appropriate column. There are 6 copies of all 10 sight words. 

 Click the pic to get PB&J Time Sight Word Center

Cupcake Word Families

I found this gift bag at the Dollar Tree and thought it was perfect for this center. The cupcake accent pieces are from Trend. I typed short vowel words on the back of each cupcake. Two for each word family. Students have to match the two cupcakes that belong in the same word family and record it on the recording sheet. Recording sheet can be found here.

Short U Word Hunt

You can't really tell in this pic, but under the orange cards is a camo pencil holder that I found at the Dollar Tree. It makes the perfect holder for these word cards.  This center can be found here

Click the pic to get Short 'u' Word Hunt

Another Dollar Tree find! I used these little die cut frogs for short 'o' words. I put an Illustrate the Word recording sheet at this center. The recording sheet can be found here.

King or Queen of the Word

The headbands are from the Mari Gras section at the Dollar Tree. This center includes 50 cards like the one shown in the left. It reinforces both rhyming and initial sounds. You can get this center here.

Flip a Chip

When I found this old poker set laying around, I knew I could use it for a new center! I put words on each poker chip. Students will flip each chip to find a certain type of words like short 'a' word, or short 'u' which is used as the example in the picture. Students will write each word that they find on a post it and place it on the paper. 

Y'all know how much I love to use these colorful trays for things in my classroom. These make perfect centers for Sequence and Plot! I usually have strips of paper that have parts from the story and the kids will sort the strips into the correct holder.

Dollar Tree find! This makes the perfect spinner that you could do so much with!

 Real or Nonsense

These pencils were found in the 88 cents section of the Back to School items at Wal Mart. Have y'all seen this section?? It has got some fabulous stuff! Recording sheet for this activity can be found here.

Another 88 cents Wal Mart find! I am using these to match rhyming words.

I've shared with y'all how much of a hit SWAT is in my classroom. I found these new fly swatters at Wal Mart and decided to make a new version of the game using sight words. You can find this center here.

Purchasing Multiple Copies of the Same Book

When I moved to fifth grade this past year, I decided I wanted to move away from the reading series a little bit and do more novel studies. This worked out wonderfully in my classroom, but I did have a problem in the beginning: how could I get my hands on 25 class copies of the same book? I had a cabinet full of books, but I wanted to use novels that I had already planned out. After a friend mentioned using Scholastic book orders to gain class sets of novels, I thought this was a brilliant idea! Scholastic always features a book in every order that is listed for $1. I kept an eye out for good quality novels that were $1 but never saw any. 

One day during plan I stumbled onto a page on the Scholastic Reading Club (formerly Scholastic Book Club) site that showed all of the $1 books. I looked around for a bit, but then my kids returned from PE and I clicked off the page. I ended up having to call Scholastic to see how to get to the page again and that's when the representative taught me a little trick:

If you search for "$1" it will bring up all the books that are currently listed for $1! I was able to buy my class set of Tuck Everlasting this way and I also snagged a class set of The Westing Game. There aren't nearly as many upper grade books right now as there are lower elementary, so kindergarten and 1st grade friends: be sure to check it out! :)

I Heart Books

Books are one of my most favorite things in the world. I love to curl up with a great book and get lost in the plot. I love finding books that are too good to put down and I hope to show that enthusiasm to my kids during the school year. I think it is so important to allow our students to see how much we as teachers love reading, so I always stick the book I'm reading in my purse and have it causally laying on my desk. My kids always want to know what I'm reading and what it's about so I've used this trick to get my students to recognize some of my all time favorites. 

Since this is Life in First Grade, I'll share some of my favorite books that I always used in my first grade classroom. If you want to see some of the upper grade books that I discovered after my first year of teaching fifth, head over to Life in Fifth Grade (Those make fantastic read alouds for younger grades!)

**Click each picture to find out more about the book and to purchase!**

{1} A Pet for Petunia by Paul Schmid

I adore this book and sweet little, confused Petunia. Petunia thinks she needs a skunk for a pet and promises to be a responsible pet owner. After failing to convince her parents, Petunia runs away into the woods and amazingly finds a skunk. Petunia is thrilled...until the skunk sprays her. I used the book every year during the Reading Street unit on pets. It ties in perfectly with Sam, Come Back! It was always a class favorite and my last year in first, we made our own skunks. You can read about them here. Click the pic to find out more about the book and purchase

{2} The Elephant and Piggie Series by Mo Willems 

I swear by this series when trying to find books for struggling readers. The characters, Elephant and Piggie are precious and the kids always fell in love with the plot of each story. The books are made up of sight words, so struggling readers can use these for practice. The books even made my reluctant readers want to read! I LOVE this series!! 

{3} The My Weird School Series by Dan Gutman
I discovered these this past year while teaching 5th grade. I have them in my classroom for some of my kids that are still reading on a 3rd grade level, but I wish I had known about them when I taught first. They would make the perfect read aloud! I always read Sideways Stories from Wayside School, but some of the kids never really got a lot of the storylines because they were a little over their heads, but this series is perfect! The titles all rhyme and feature a teacher at the school. Some of my favorites include Miss Daisy is Crazy, Ms Small is Off the Wall, Ms Todd is Odd, and Ms Hannah is Bananas


{4} Unique Monique by Maria Rousaki
I always liked to read this one at the beginning of the year when we are getting to know each other. Monique is also a great character to do activities with when discussing character traits. She wants to be unique and stand out, so she tries to do different things each day, but everything she does, everyone else ends up copying her.It's a sweet story that the kids always enjoy.



{5} I Dare You Not to Yawn by Helene Boudreau
My kids LOVED this book! It's so funny watching them trying to fight the urge to yawn and we always barely got through the book in a fit of giggles. This one is such a FUN read aloud!

Want to share your favorite books? Be sure and link up over at Deanna's blog! 

Literature Circles

I know. It's the middle of June and most of y'all are either out of school by now or finishing up. The last thing on your mind is probably school right now, but I was going through pictures on my computer and I realized I had never shared with y'all how I finally incorporated literature circles in my classroom. I've been wanting to do this forever and while it might be a bit harder to tackle in 1st grade, I do think it is doable. It worked wonderfully in my 5th grade classroom though, so maybe you'll walk away with some ideas and some freebies! :)

I did my first literature circle when we were finishing up our novel study on Tuck Everlasting. We divided into 3 groups of 6-7 each. The groups were randomly selected. I had started to let them group themselves, but I wanted to mix it up a little and have them work with people they aren't best friends.  After dividing up, I passed out these little buttons and assigned everyone a job. 

These little buttons were super easy to make! I found the clear buttons here and then created each job circle, printed, cut, and popped them in. The hardest part was sizing the circles to make them fit, but I've already done that for you! You can grab a free copy of the inserts in my TpT Shop here. 

I was worried that the kids wouldn't want to wear them or they would think they were babyish, but they LOVED them! I was actually surprised at how big a hit they were. 

Once everyone got assigned a job, it was time to get down to business. You can find the job description sheets here.

These literature circles helped aid discussion really well in my classroom and the kids LOVED it! I will definitely be doing this a lot more next year! :)