Hey all!!!   Now I do know that a few of you are still in the classroom and summer vacation hasn’t quite welcomed you with open arms.  However, we are going to welcome you with open arms in this blog post we are going to assume that we are ALL enjoying our summer vacation… you know those initial first few days were you have first turned off those pesky alarms and are realizing what it’s like to be a normal human again AKA (not eating lunch in 10 minutes flat, using the restroom more than once a day and having some form of sanity left at the end of the day).  Today I would like to kick off the ‘unofficial’ first weekend of summer, Memorial Day Weekend with a super fun giveaway that only teachers could drool over!  This giveaway is all about getting prepped over summer!  No, no!  I am not saying I want you to prep all summer!  Who are we kidding though?  I know you probably already thought about cutting or laminating something.  Now if your instant ink just came back in then I know you’ve already been at your computer printing up a storm all morning HA!

 **I would like to say also that I am not being paid by HP,  XYRON,  Amazon or any other company.  I also do not have any affiliate links for these two products on my page!  These are just products I personally have at my house and use!  I like to try and GIVE BACK to teachers and thought this would be a fun way to do so! ** 

  Let’s get started!  Now teachers unfortunately are always “prepping”.  What are we prepping?  Well, we preparing for our academic days!  You see even if we work for awesome districts and they us these million dollar curriculum programs from these fancy smancy companies… they still don’t have everything our kiddos need!  Something these programs lack is centers!  Centers are way for students to work independent.  Why must kiddos work independently you ask?  Students work independently for a variety of reasons but the majority of the time it is so the teacher can work with students in small groups at their own instructional level.   Today I would like to talk more about centers!

Last year I found myself scrambling for centers each week!  Well… let me put it this way…. quick!  What can I print, laminate, cut and throw into a basket without staying here until midnight!? HA!  A little dramatic… but pretty much!  Another biggie was my kiddos’ OBSESSION with our weekly KinderLiteracy themes!  They ate it up and wanted more, more, more!  We couldn’t read enough books or watch enough YouTube clips for our theme!

The first time I showed them our new themed centers….well they flipped out! What does that mean in teacher lingo?  Happy kids equals ENGAGED kids!  I’m sure you’ve ran across many center packets on TpT and I have several in my shop as well.  They are all fantastic… but I still wanted more for my kiddos!  They loved their skill focus centers for alphabet, sounds, rhyming, etc…. However, I wanted centers that would match up to our class themes and centers that would be so fun… they’d forget they were learning!

 

When I mapped out my list of themes and started creating the centers I knew I wanted something different from these centers.  I wanted them to take on more of a “real-life” look as I knew this would be even more exciting for the kids!  You’ll notice in the pictures below that there are very few “cut on the straight line” centers.  These are hands-on and require the kids to really manipulate the pieces!  Up first I will share my Kindergarten themed centers!  Even if you don’t teach KinderLiteracy…you’ll notice that they are all very common themes covered in kindergarten!  There are 25 themes and you can see the full list below:

School
Apples
Transportation
Seasons
Pumpkins
Three Pigs
Three Goats
Three Bears
Little Red Hen
Bats
Scarecrows
Reindeer
Snow
Penguins
Snakes
Dinosaurs
Moon
Weather
Ponies
Rabbits
Frogs
Butterflies
Flowers
Community Helpers
Ocean

Below is an up close look of the center packets found in the kindergarten centers bundle!

After many requests for additional Kinder themes, I then created a second set of Kinder centers!  This set is all NEW themes for Kinder!  This is Kinder Themed Centers Set Two!

Fire Safety
Space
Patriotic
Volcanoes
Owls
Spiders
Thanksgiving
Gingerbread Boy
Christmas
Mitten
Bears
Valentine’s Day
Dental
Friendship
St. Patrick’s Day
Farm
Chickens
Tigers
Koalas
Pirates

Then of course to follow suit with Kindergarten, I made a second set of first grade centers!  Let’s take a look at the First Grade Centers Set Two!

Spiders
Owls
Red Riding Hood
Thanksgiving
Christmas
Gingerbread Boy
Mitten
Bears
Valentine’s Day
Friendship
Dental
St. Patrick’s Day
Farm
Insects
Chickens
Tigers
Cows
Fish
Koalas
Pirates

Up next was of course second grade themed centers!Halloween
Bats
Patriotic
Thanksgiving
Reindeer
Christmas
Snow
Penguins
Valentine’s Day
Dinosaurs
St. Patrick’s Day
Weather
Farm
Butterflies
Frogs
Flowers
Ocean
Pirates
Apples
Back to School

I really thought I had MASTERED and CONQUERED every last wish for centers in all of center land HAHA! However, I had a lot of teachers really stressed the need for differentiated centers.  They had a class of kiddos that VARIED greatly on their skills but we know at this age kiddos are super observant… why does Johnny get to do cool dinosaur  centers and I’m over here with magnet letters?  I set out on a mission to create truly differentiated centers!  What does that mean?  You could use a set of centers simultaneously with two levels of kiddos and their centers would look the same but the skills would be completely different!  Let’s take a closer look!

Below you can see the example of the “Kinder” version!  In this center the students are working on CVC words.

In an almost identical center, the students are working on CVCe words!  So you have increased the rigor greatly with a very similar center!

Here is another example!  Below is a look at the Kinder CVC short vowel sort center.

In the first grade version, the students are sorting vowel teams!  Again you can see that the center looks almost identical yet the skill is completely different!

One last example!  Below is the CVC kinder onset and rime center!

Using the very similar clip art, the differentiated version the students are working on soft/hard sounds!

This bundle offers 5 kindergarten literacy centers, 5 first grade literacy centers, 2 kindergarten math centers and 2 first grade math centers per theme!  This is my Kinder and First Grade Themed Center Set!  You can see a full list of the themes below!   These are completely new themes from the previous sets!  This set also has the “I can” cards!

Groundhogs
Pets
Construction
Read Day
Earth Day
Western
Bugs
Rainforest
Zoo
Summer
Baseball
Nursery Rhymes
Food
Magic
Around the School
Monsters
Science
Maps/Land forms
Forest Animals
Celebrations Around the World

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