The Block Center

Do “other people” think your kids are just playing in all those centers you’ve worked so hard on?

Our block center is a natural for math and even science, but we want to get some literacy in there too.

We have some vocabulary words posted that describe our current science objective – motion – “round and round, zig zag, curve”.

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Next we went to makinglearningfun.com and downloaded their highway letters and numbers.  We are going to put a few of these through the poster maker at school so they will be big enough for some of our bigger vehicles.  I found this environmental print activity on Pintrest.  Put some store logos on various blocks and then have a questionnaire for the kids to fill out that asks where they would find things from the various stores, for example if you have a Target logo you could ask where would you go to find a bicycle; if you had a MacDonald’s logo you could ask where would you go to get a hamburger?  If your kids can’t read the words make it with pictures.  Students respond by drawing the store logo next to the item. (I got the set of small blocks from Big Lots for $5.)

The kids really love this one – recreating a scene from a favorite storybook.  All you need is a copy of a book that the kids are familiar with, some simple “props”.  In this case we have a red bead for the “magic pebble” and some pictures of the characters from Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.

This is a picture of another teacher’s block center with books, puzzles and a basket of writing materials for labeling structures or roads.

 What I particularly like about her block center is she has environmental print and posters of different looking structures posted low for her kids to look at while they are working with their blocks.

Please leave us a comment and tell us about the fun things your kids do in your centers.

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