Independent work is the backbone of any successful classroom but that doesn’t mean your kids need to be stringing beads and sorting colored bears all day. If you are like me, you may feel like sometimes our understaffed schools have forced us into a situation of having a too much time an independent work. In the wise words of Tim Gun, “make it work.” Take the opportunity of having extra independent work time to make sure that your independent work is meaningful and gives your students to practice the academics that you have worked so hard with them on. My favorite solution here are my 3 sets of centers. It started with the Writing Centers and they were so successful with my kids. Once something goes well, it’s time to expand and extend! Then I created Math Centers and Literacy Centers in the same format. I love keeping the format of activities the same and switching up the content!

These centers target synonyms, antonyms, homophones, ABC order, idioms, vowel patterns, parts of speech, syllables, sentence structure, and more!

These centers target telling time, money skills, fractions, measuring, weight, math operations, patterns, and more!

These centers target descriptive writing, narrative writing, sentence building, sequencing, making inferences, vocabulary building, imaginative writing, and more!