"I'm done, now what?" Baskets

 "I'm done! What do I do now???" Ever heard that question?? There are a lot of great ideas floating around out there to help answer it, but here's my solution: I decided to put baskets on each of the tables with activities for the children to do when they are done with their work early or need to fill a few minutes between class activities.

Each basket has a variety of math and literacy items...some of them are the same for each table, some of them are different. For example, there are 6 children at each table, so each basket has 6 sets of sight words for them to practice. I also have 6 "smart pals" in each basket and a set of dry erase markers for them to practice sight word tic-tac-toe, nonsense words, number writing, math skills, etc.

Each basket also has items that I rotate at the end of the week, like beginning/ending sound practice or number activities.

So far, this has worked well. I have not heard, "I'm done, now what???" in a few weeks! The children have gotten into the routine of choosing something to work on until they hear differently.  I fill the basket with activities, then rotate them at the end of the week to the next table, so I only need to change the materials every 3 weeks. I am updating the baskets for March tomorrow. Thanks for checking in and have a great day!