Work Stations - Centers

Station	Description	Picture
Math Mountain	Fill in the missing numbers on a 100s chart
	Geoboards; practice shapes
	Pattern blocks; fill in a design 3 different ways and record on sheet.
	Non-standard Weighing of Objects (using pennies as the units); compare cups with differing weights.
Writing Waterfall	Handwriting Practice in Wipe-off books (using grease pencil)
	Begin journal writing to a prompt
	Thank you letter to Fire hall or Apple Orchard
Word Wilderness	Stamp in the missing ABC letters. pdf file
	Name Bingo--All the students' names are on bingo sheets (sev. different arrangements) and students take turns drawing a name out of a cup, calling it out loud, then all mark it on their sheets.
	Color word and Number word matching games
	Students practice Word Wall Words using magnetic letters, Wikki Stiks, Pipe Cleaners
Game Geyser	Various games & puzzles
Construction Cove	Legos, Gears, and other materials. Later, students will fill out a planning sheet, draw a picture of the creation and write a description.
Pocket Chart Park	Name sorts--Students unscramble their name or that of their classmates. Work in pairs or threes-one picks a name bag, one arranges the letters, the other checks (name on bag)
	Favorites Sort - Students pick a paragraph about themselves or a classmate, then match up the missing info on the sentence strips.
	Pond Match
	Who Said That?
Camp Read-a-lot	Reading Tent--alone or with a partner
Read around the River (room)	Use a pointer to read print around the room, including Hiker of the Day posters.
Big Book Boulder	Read Big Books (big books we have read together), find the vocab words and sequence sentence strips--notice you need BIG glasses to read BIG books!
Craft Canyon	Name Danglers-I had letters in baggies and the kids picked out their name's letters (diff. colors) and glued them together.
	Watercolor--this is often a favorite. It is always a free choice, but we also have "assigned" projects like this desert landscape.
	Apple Core Art--the kids cut out the top, middle, and bottom of their apple core. They then glued a few real apple seeds to the middle.
	Apple Tree Seasons--for this activity, the kids must first color the background blue, then color the trunks. Next, in whatever order, they add tissue paper blossoms, green full tree, golden fall tree with ripe apples, and a cotton ball winter tree.
	Clay Pond Animals--during our pond study, the kids got to make their favorite pond animal out of clay.
Computer Cliff	Starfall.com, Word processing
Listening Log	Listen to story and read along in the book; fill in response sheet (.pdf)
Poetry Pond (On Overhead)	Students choose poems that we have read together as a class and do choral readings at the overhead, then use "word lifters" to find the rhyming words.
Drama Den	Students act out (retell) stories we have read; come up with original plays; puppets will be added soon.
Theme Trail	ACTIV ® board activities like labeling, matching, completing food chains, comparisons (as in example at right).
Research Rock	Unit activities and books

This year I had 5 groups. Each group rotated through 3 stations a day, three days a week. Each rotation lasted 15-20 minutes.