What’s in my Writing Center?

Here it is, another installment of “What’s in my Writing Center?”

We are really focused on rain and the weather. My kiddos are obsessed with tornadoes, and I am trying to build a foundation for general understanding of the weather through our project work so that they can form a better foundation for what makes tornadoes.  To me, this means giving them the vocabulary to use to talk about weather phenomena. I also love that I can use their interests to attract them to other activities!

Here’s what in my Writing Center this week:

Rain Boot Letter Match. This was one of my small group activities last week, but I wanted to make sure that more of my students took the time to explore this concept.  For this activity, students have to match the blue lowercase letter boots with the corresponding yellow uppercase letter boots.  It’s a simple activity, but there are a lot of letters to sift through, so not only are the children practicing letter recognition, they are also working through frustration and persistence. For younger students I would only put out a few of these matches, switching them each day.

Short a CVC words. This is an extension of the -at family mat that I had out last week.  My students loved that they were able to create and read these words on their own, and they flew through the -at family so fast that I put out all of the short a word families for this week. This way they can try a different mat each day, and continue building that confidence!

Rainy Day vocabulary cards.  The weather has begun to warm up (and by warm I mean 37 degrees ass opposed to the mid twenties), and for us this usually means rain instead of snow.  I put out these vocab cards for the children to practice with because we will certainly be using these words a lot.

Gel Bags and Letter Cards.  My kids love these gel bags, I don’t know if it’s the colors, or the way they feel, but they are always a hit.  I’ve made them a few different ways, these are filled with hair gel and taped across the top for extra durability.  When I use these with younger kids I like to use corn syrup inside so that if they do end up chewing on them, its not a big deal. I put these out with letter cards and showed my students how to flatten the bags over the cards so that they can “write” the letters in the gel with their finger.

What’s in your Writing Center this week? I’d love to hear from you!