If you don’t have a listening center, you should. Take all those scholastic book order points you have accumulated and spend them on listening center books. If you just buy the little collection each month, after a year you will have an entire listening center all based around your themes and everything.

One of the most important things to remember in centers is to make sure you are holding your kids accountable for the centers. A lot of times we let the kids have fun in centers, and we just totally forget that we need to make sure they are actually DOING the work they are supposed to do. Something as simple as this listening center can make sure they are doing their work, and if centers are supposed to be 15 minutes long and your book is only nine or ten, then you need something to keep those kids occupied for the last few minutes of the center. It is all about making sure your students are never sitting there with nothing in front of them. This is the age of TV on Demand and Internet games at the touch of their little fingertips, don’t try to fight it! Instead just plan ahead and be prepared for it by making sure that they have stuff to do during their down time.

Click here for your free Listening Center Handout

Bingo is my all time, hands down favorite way to handle downtime in a kindergarten classroom. I have, on more than one occasion, looked up at the clock and realized we had like two minutes to get our bags together and get home because I was having so much fun! (I don’t recommend this practice, by the way, you should definitely keep a better eye on the time than that!)

I wanted to give other teachers an opportunity to play some Bingo too, so I am offering my Colors and Shapes Bingo here for free!

Click here for your Free Colors and Shapes Bingo

One of my favorite things to do is to have the students complete a self portrait of themselves on the first day of school and then again at the end of school. It is so neat to see how much their writing and drawing skills have approved! Just make sure to keep these in a place you will remember. One year I thought I had lost mine and I was so worried!
Also, I always do one of myself when the kids draw theirs. It is interesting to see how my perception of myself changes throughout the year. My favorite was the one I had to draw of my pregnant self at the end of the year. The kids got such a kick out of seeing my before and after drawings!

To download your free self portrait handouts click here!