Next year our school is doing a reading block and a math block. I am excited about this and being able to integrate the other subjects into our reading and math times. I have always blended my curriculum and cannot wait to do more with thematic units. However in the past we were told to stay away from too many thematic units. It's funny to watch how the pendulum swings back and forth. When I started 6 years ago we used themes. Then after one or two years, we had to follow the basal with fidelity. Now we are back to using themes and only the "meaty" parts of the basal while using the common core standards. Our school went ahead and implemented the CCS this past year in Kindergarten, so I feel comfortable with the standards and am focusing on planning my new theme-filled year. We can finally bring the fun back to Kindergarten! Has this ever happened to anyone else?!?!
So, back to the original tangent of being addicted to pinterest... I was looking up math ideas and want to implement daily math centers next year. I have always done math centers in my classroom, but only once or twice a week. It was difficult to fit them in with the SS, Science, and Writing blocks built into my schedule. Now that we are "allowed" to integrate these subjects, I want to do centers daily. I bought Debbie Diller's book Math Work Stations. I saw many pinterest ideas that referred back to this book. Has anyone read it? Was it as inspirational as everyone says?
I also found a few blogs that had some good ideas.
Now my brain is spinning on what to do and how to organize them. I hope the book will help me sort out my ideas. I am very lucky to have many different Lakeshore Math centers from grants I wrote on Donors Choose (if you haven't checked out that website, you must. It is a great way to get classroom supplies for free from kind strangers!). We must follow the order of our basal (Go Math) because of our report card requirements, so I'm tied down to what must be taught each nine weeks. I am more concerned with logistics. How to group the kids, how long to stay at the centers, keep the same center types all year or do random centers, etc. Has anyone implemented math centers daily in their classroom? If so, I'd love some pointers or even a link to a blog/website that has ideas. Thanks in advance for the help or suggestions! I love learning things from other teachers!
