Beginning the day in a positive way is important for everyone, but setting the tone in your classroom is especially important. Creating a morning routine that allows students to prepare for the day, engage in social skills, and anticipate morning work activities can be beneficial in maintaining structure and promoting work ethic to your young learners! These are some activities you can use in your morning work routine!
1. Thinking and Writing
This is a fabulous alternative to morning work! Use the same writing template to inspire thinking. Students can look at a picture, think about what is happening, and then wonder more about it. They can record all thoughts through writing. Add a social interaction twist by allowing students to pair together and share.
Learn more: Lucky Little Learners
2. ELA and Math Practice Sheets
Spiral review sheets are great for math skills or literacy skills! Students can get lots of practice with previously learned skills by using these as regular morning work!
Learn more: The Literacy Loft
3. Get Your Hands Busy
Motor skills are important skills and easy to incorporate into your routine through daily morning work. Students can use hands-on, building activities for building relationships too! Legos, magnetic building blocks, and other building materials are great for high interest, hands-on morning work activities.
Learn more: True Life I’m A Teacher
4. Common Core Aligned Morning Work
Using a workbook to boost daily practice of common core aligned math and literacy skill sets is a great way to have a ready-made resource. Morning work is a perfect time to practice and have a daily review of skills.
Learn more: Second Story Window
5. Monthly Morning Worksheets
Monthly themes are great and can coincide with the skills taught. These worksheets include extra practice with fine motor skills, daily math practice, and literacy skills. They are easy to copy and go!
Learn more: Keeping My Kiddo Busy
6. Math One More/One Less
One more/one less is a great skill to develop in students who are building a foundation of basic math knowledge and skills. This morning work would be great to model during calendar time and let students begin it as independent practice for morning work later. Use this resource with a hundreds chart!
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7. Place Value Practice
Every math classroom should have plenty of hands-on manipulatives for students to explore and utilize when learning. This is especially helpful when learning about place value. Morning work that allows the practice of place value is beneficial. Place value is an important skill to build upon.
Learn more: All Kids Network
8. Coin Identification
Kids don’t see adults use actual money very often anymore. Morning work that allows an opportunity for students to practice identifying and sorting money will lay the foundation for counting the money later.
Learn more: The Moffatt Girls
9. Mixed Review Practice
These morning mats can be copied each day or laminated and used with a dry erase marker. These are a great mix of math, grammar, and writing! The days of morning work being stressful are gone with this easy-to-use, no prep morning mats.
Learn more: Smiling and Shining Second Grade
10. Number Sense Practice
Number sense is vital for building a solid math foundation! These number sense practice pages are great math morning work ideas. Easy to prep by copying and putting in protective sleeves in a binder, students can use dry-erase markers to practice writing the number, word, tally marks, and tens frame version of the number. Find more fun number activities for preschoolers here.
Learn more: SSS Teaching
11. Phone Number Practice
Take a few minutes of morning work time to focus on other important pieces of information. Teaching students their phone number is a practical life skill that is often lost these days.
Learn more: SSS Teaching
12. Word Problem Practice
Another good math option for morning work is word problems. Students will have some options with this one by drawing their own picture and filling in the blanks of the word problem. They are given the set up for the equation to complete and solve.
Learn more: Miss Kindergarten
13. Equal or Not?
Practicing equal or not equal is a great skill for first graders to practice. Add in some cutting and gluing and you are also working on fine motor skills as well!
Learn more: Miss Giraffe’s Class
14. Hands-On Station Bins
Station bins are great options for morning work as well. Using puzzles, money tasks, base ten blocks, and even patterns are great ideas for these bins. Students could track their work in a math notebook or morning work notebook.
Learn more: Hanging Around in Primary
15. Counting Practice
Counting practice is very important. Using counting collections should be part of a successful math day. There should be devoted time for first graders to practice counting. You could use activities or just have items to be counted.
Learn more: Kinder Tribe
16. Letter Match
Letter matching is an easy skill to practice. This can also be done with numbers and clip the number of clothespins onto the number. These are easy and quick to add to morning tubs. Having many options in morning tubs is good because students will have options for more engaging activities as they finish one and can complete the next one.
Learn more: Kinder Tribe
17. Alphabetical Order
Alphabetical order is a great skill for students to practice. Adding these alphabetizing activities is a quick and easy morning tub idea. 1st grade friends will enjoy this activity!
Learn more: My Kind of Teaching
18. Building Sight Words
Students can use building blocks to spell out individual letters to create sight words. This is a great option for students who learn best through kinesthetic learning. This will become a personal favorite for you because it is quick and easy, and your students will love this hands-on morning work alternative.
Learn more: ABCs of Literacy
19. CVC Word Builder
Help students build a strong base of phonics skills with these CVC word builder cards. Once you print and laminate these cards, you’ll have a no prep and engaging option for daily reading morning work.
Learn more: The Moffatt Girls
20. Bottle Cap Words
A morning tub time idea can be a great alternative to traditional morning work! Use bottle caps to have students spell and write out words they can make. This is great for practicing blending CVC words. This can also be done with letter stamps or letter tiles.
Learn more: My Primary Paradise
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