Literacy Centers. Here's my plan! What is yours?

Hello! My, this summer is buzzing by so darn quick! I have been very busy creating resources this summer to help ease my transition from K into second grade this fall. One nice thing about my new class will be that I'll be lucky to have a very small class size (14) and also another teacher in the room! I feel very spoiled :) I was so excited to be able to plan for literacy centers this summer because I will be able to devote more time to individual reading groups and my students will also be slightly more independent due to their age. I toyed around with A LOT of ideas people. A LOT. I scribbled all over notebook after notebook coming up with possible plans. I did, eventually, decide that I wanted to be meeting with all three of my reading groups every day...well...four days a week. Here is my plan!

The bee hives move down each day Monday-Friday (like my deck photo?! enjoying the summer sun while it lasts!)

I like using a pocket chart to show the kids visuals for where they'll be going. This helps them to be more self sufficient.  I have 8 literacy centers set up (see above). We'll be doing centers 4 days per week. Each day, we will do 3 rotations. Students will visit two centers... And their third center is my reading group! My differentiated groups are bee themed. The three teams are shown on the hive cards. They go to the two centers beside their card... In that order. However, they also meet with me each day for small group reading. The honey bee team always meets first, the yellow jackets second, and the bumble bees third! I am really hoping this schedule works for us and I expect that I will be tweaking it over time. Do you have different ideas about how to run literacy centers? I'd love if you'd share some in the comments! I am always looking to improve! 

P.S. I absolutely adored Cara Carrol's series of Write On write the room centers for my Kinder class last year. You can now buy them as an {amazing} bundle! Click here if you are interested! 

I searched and searched for something to replace them for second grade and I couldn't find anything that was just right... So I made my own! 

Introducing the first installment of my Write The Room packs for Second Grade! Back to School Edition! You can head on over to my store to check them out! I am super excited to use them in my own literacy and math centers very soon! 

On to October!

I realize that I am posting about Halloween in June! However, I have decided to slowly give a recap of the fun we've had in Kindergarten over the past year! It would have been better to have posted this in October...but who has the time??!

Here are some of the fun activities my little ones enjoyed in October!

Sorting spooky AB, ABB, and ABC patterns!

Roll and cover pumpkin center-- a quick and simple way to build number fluency for 1-6! 

In this center, a freebie from Cara Carroll at TheFirstGradeParade! She is the BEST! It was adorable and also a very good practice for making 10. Kids roll a number, put the eyeballs onto the ten frame, and then count the number of spaces left and use that to help them write a number sentence for 10! My kids loved this one so much that they still talk about it now in June! It was a favorite. You can find it at her blog here!

You can find some of these fun October spooky centers by heading over to my store! Click here to go! 

Whew! At least we're getting a LITTLE closer to June, right?! Not really!