The best way to do this is with Table Top Center Activities or “Table Tops”. Table Tops give your students many opportunities to continue working on rules and procedures while beginning to learn to write.

Something so many of us forget is that at this young age, children still have not honed their fine motor skills, and with Table Tops they will learn to do just that. Table Tops will not be done every day for the rest of the year. You will probably only use them for the first six weeks of teaching, and in just a couple of weeks, they will be the lead in to more structured writing time. Table Top time should be limited to fifteen minutes each day.

In preparation, you are going to need five baskets. (I use 9×12x6 baskets because they hold paper well.) You need to label these baskets with a lion, a tiger, a bear, a zebra, and a monkey. I use these animals because even students who have not yet learned to recognize their alphabet, shapes, or colors have usually learned to recognize these animals. We have free center tags available by clicking here. These baskets aren’t going to change much over the next six weeks, but you will change out the activities in them once a week.

The baskets each have a specific theme designed to help children develop their fine motor skills, but are generic enough that students with highly developed motor skills can still learn from them. In the next few pages you will find a description of what each basket will contain.

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