Center Time

"Center Time" is a good time for me to do small group work focusing on specific skills.  I set up four table of activities.  They are in a group of four and when the alarm sounds they clean up their area and move on to the next.  Today I made the centers very easy, so they could understand how they work.  This is what they did:
#1 Play Dough - They could use the play dough toys to play.  I forgot to take a photo of this center.
#2 Pattern Blocks - They used pattern blocks to make cool designs and other creations.
#3 Writing Practice - I had them practice drawing circles, Xs, Es, 1s, etc.
#4  Insect Center - In science class we begin the year talking about living things, so at my science center we start out learning about insects during story time, since they are the most common animal that kids might see in their environment. 
"Center Time" will become more content centered in time, but today they needed to learn how to stay in the group, share, get along and how the whole thing works. 

Writing is not only developmental, but it also takes some 
self-confidence.  Sometimes kindergartners get stressed 
out about writing, so I take it slow at the beginning 
encouraging them as much as possible.

Learning about 2D and 3D shapes is one of the big four 
math concepts that kindergartners have to know.  These 
pattern blocks help them to see how smaller shapes 
together can make larger shapes.

This is the Insect Center and they looked through the books.  
One boy came up and asked if the photographs of 
butterfly metamorphosis was real.  When I said 
that it was, he was really excited!