Morning Work Buckets for Kindergarten and 1st Grade

Hey, everyone! 

This is Kelly from My Fabulous Class.

I am so excited to share something that Worked Well for me last year. If you follow my blog or Facebook, you know last year, I started using Morning Work Buckets. These are the BEST thing I implemented in my classroom last year. You can read all about it HERE.

Morning Work Buckets were a HUGE time saver for me. They gave kids the opportunity to have something meaningful to do when they walked in the door, while I took attendance, checked binders, kissed boo-boos, and listened to stories. I started using them in the spring and I WISH I had used them all year long. They worked so well, I am going to start the year out with them.

Morning Work Buckets are meant to be INDEPENDENT. For the first 2-3 days, I am planning on only using simple math manipulatives, such as unifix cubes and pattern blocks.  Even before I started using Morning Work Buckets, I have always started the year off with buckets of math manipulatives. It has always worked well, since I do not have expectations for how students use them, yet. It is about more about playing and discovering.

At the beginning of the year, I like to incorporate fine motor activities to help strengthen little fingers and clothes pins are perfect for that. This activity is simple enough that kids to do it independently, after I have modeled it. This is also a simple activity to make. The letters and numbers are die-cuts that I had and laminated. For the letter clothes pins, I added some washi tape before sticking foam letters on them.

Beading is always a class favorite. Kids LOVE it. Some kids may not have one to one correspondence at the beginning of the year and that is okay. You can just view this as a fine motor activity or you can have some kids work with a partner. To make these, I just hot glued the apple numbers to the pipe cleaner. You can the apples FREE HERE.

I am also a HUGE fan of sensory buckets. I am excited to incorporate sensory buckets into morning work buckets. This one won't come until week 2, when I feel comfortable that students understand the expectations of rice. It is still a simple activity. Kids pull out a magnet and see if it matches their mat. I would recommend doubling the number of magnets so students do not fight over them. You can see how I make colored rice HERE.  It is pretty simple. It just takes time to dry. You can get the mats I made FREE HERE.

Really, you can use any of your favorite activities for Morning Work Buckets. At the beginning of the year, keep it simple. 

Do you want more?

Do to popular demand, I created Kindergarten Morning Work Buckets for the year. This Growing bundle is heavily discounted for Summer 2018. The price will go up when the bundle is complete.

Buy Kindergarten Morning Work Buckets HERE.

First Grade Friends, I have you covered too! Check out First Grade Morning Work Buckets.