Challenge Tubs and Skill Tubs

In my last post I talked about the kids coming to the library during their center time from their classrooms.  We worked with their teachers to kinda set some rules about what they should be doing. We want them to always have the option of checking out a book.  However sometimes they don't need a new one yet and we want them to have the freedom of using the centers in the library.  We call them Cozy Corners but this year we added many things.  We wanted some specific skills that the students can work on that go along with what they are doing in class.  To start this I attend all the grade level planning meetings to find out how we can help and what we can do to extend their skills in the library.  That is how our Skills Tubs were born.

We started with the basic retelling of a story with First Grade and rhyming words with Kindergarten.   We have many props and felt board pieces that can be used for retelling a story.  My aide, Becca is also a genius at making things from nothing.  If I come up with a big idea she can make it happen.
For instance imagine making patterns in math.  She came up with making a tree out of pipe cleaners and using colored beads for the kids to make patterns on the branches.  We also include "Challenge Yourself" cards in as many of the boxes as we can.

Skill Tubs have "Challenge Yourself" cards in them

                                     

We put the items in a clear plastic size shoe box, which is what we use for all of our tubs in the library.  We found a perfect spot on the bottom of the Easy section.  That little wasted space is no longer wasted.  We marked the boxes with the grade and Skill tub and bam you have a perfect skill tub.  When we are ready to rotate them out we just take the skill tub tag off and reuse the parts for something else or let the teachers use them in their classrooms.

Using the bottom shelves to store these

Sensory tubs are also a big deal in our library and you would be shocked to know that the 5th graders love them just as much and the Kindergartners do.  If you want to learn more about them you can read the blog post from last year here.  http://donaldelemmediacenter.blogspot.com/2015/09/sensory-tubs.html 

These are just a few that are in the works.

Our Challenge Lab is new this year.  I have continued to struggle with running a good makerspace area where I felt the kids were really learning?  I've spent plenty of money on building things like Magnatiles, K'Nex and of course legos.  I always let the kids "play" with them but I thought maybe there needed to be some more structure or direction.  That is where the idea of a Challenge Lab came from.  Our gifted and talented teacher is doing challenges in here classroom for the entire school every week and I realized I could build off of this concept and really transform my makerspace area.

We still have a green screen wall that can be used but we also have one in another room in the building.  We have 4 different areas in there (as soon as our new bookshelves get here we will.) We will have the Challenge Tub area, the Build area, the Can you Make area, and the Electronic area.

The Challenge tubs will challenge the kids to build things with the materials provided. Each tub has a ring of pictures for them to look at and try to build.  This is where the challenge part comes in.  Everybody can build a tall tower,  but try building a 3-D object or a trap.  We have tubs with a deck or cards, unifix cubes, dixie cups, popsicle sticks and other things. There are also math challenge tubs included. 

Challenge tub cards

                                         

The Build tubs have building materials like lego's, K'NEX, Magnatiles, Straw Connectors and other building blocks. These can be used to build the same structures we have in the Challenge tubs or just free building.

The Can you Make tubs have things like sewing, bookmarks, greeting cards, weaving, rainbow loom and origami.

The electronic things are all of our robot and coding things.  

I hope you get some great ideas from this or just see what our kids are doing.

Cozy Corners (Centers Part 2)

As promised this is part 2 of Cozy Corners, last week I said to start small and grow from there.  Some other centers we are using that cost very little.  While digging through old "stuff" in closets and workrooms we came across several of the clear overhead manipulatives that nobody uses anymore. Now if you still use an Overhead projector your kids might not find this very exciting but our younger kids have never seen an Overhead Projector.  We called our warehouse and asked if they had any sitting around, they did and sent us one the next day.  As I said last week we used the book drop cart and turned it into a puzzle table, so that leaves an open space where the cart was.  We put the overhead on a little scooter (it was in bad shape and the PE teacher gave it to us) and slid it in that space.  So the overhead cozy corner is now out of sight unless somebody is using it.  We put all the little manipulatives in a container and they kids project it on the wall and use it.  For fun sometimes we even put paper for them to trace the shapes on.  We have tangrams, counters, money and clocks for them to use.

Introducing the Overhead to Kindergarten

Playing with the Overhead

It projects perfectly onto the wall in front of it.

When not in use we just push it back and out of the way.  Pieces are stored in little drawers.

Felt Board Fun has been a huge hit.  Remember the days when we used it all the time to tell a story, well guess what the kids still love and they don't know much about it.  We found a set of felt characters from The Three Little Pigs and and thought we would use it during a read aloud.  The kids loved it so much off to Michaels and Hobby Lobby we went.  We bough cheap scraps of felt and cut out turkey feathers and turkey parts for our first Felt Board Fun.  Remember that easel we used last week for the big books, well we used the back side and put felt on it and bam we had a new Cozy Corner.

We used a plastic show box and bull clips to hold it on.  The clip on the lip of the box holds it there and they
can put the pieces of felt in the box.

Found these little kits at Michaels for under $5.00

Our Turkey - it was Grandparent luncheon and book fair so Grandpa was helping

I had a corner that wasn't really being used so I bought 6 yards of black felt - I don't sew so even trying to figure out felt was funny.  Stapled it up on the wall and we have a wall to do bigger things.  I even cut and painted all the tiles for Scrabble and the older kids like to play Scrabble.

Winter snowman and our year round tree that shows the seasons

In October we used the Skeleton with the book Bones by Steve Jenkins as a connection

"Do you wanna build a Snowman"  Of course they do.

Scrabble Wall.  

Doodle and Draw was also easy to get started and maintain.  We found a small white board in a closet and pulled it out with some dry erase markers and the kids love to write and draw on it.  If a color sheet can be found that goes with a read aloud story we will copy it and put it out for the younger kids.  I also found some Doodle and Draw books and plain white scratch paper, included some buckets or markers and crayons and there you go.  We put clip boards there so they can move around with their papers.  

White board

Doodle and Draw Cozy Corner

Some kids drawing, you can see the Big Book and Felt easel in the back

Color pages from Teddy Bear Picnic

The last Cozy Corner I want to share with you today is a Bigger than Life Shelving game.  We asked the kids to bring in cracker boxes and cereal boxes and we covered them with paper and made them look like a book.  We have them sort them into the Dewey Classification and then self them in the proper order.  I ended up some empty shelves after weeding so they actually do it on a real shelf.  We are going to have the older kids put them on the real shelf where they go mixed in with the real library books.   No cost at all for this Cozy Corner.

Shelf Me

Now I should tell you that we are a full iPad campus so all of my students have an iPad that they have at home and school everyday.  You will notice none of these Centers have anything to do with technology and we did that on purpose.  We use plenty of technology in projects and lessons.