Why A Morning Work Alternative?
What Are the Procedures of a Morning Work Alternative?
When the timer goes off, I set the timer again for 2 minutes. Students know they have to work together as a team to clean up and be on the carpet by the end of the 2 minutes. If a table has not synergized, they lose the privilege of participating in morning tubs the next day. Three weeks in, this has never happened. My friends really treasure Morning Tubs.
What is the Teacher Doing During Morning Tubs?
Great question! During morning tubs, I always take Attendance on Infinite Campus and check the turn-it-in tray. Earlier in January when first introducing morning tubs, I spent a lot of time playing with my friends modeling kind social interactions. Now, if specifically asked or needed, I will join our morning-tub time, which I love doing. BUT 8 minutes, is just the right amount of time I need to read with a friend. My friends LOVE getting to new reading levels and it’s been a wonderful structure to encourage me to read with a friend each morning.
What Have Been the Benefits of Doing Morning Work Alternatives?
- My friends have started thinking outside the box with the materials. Base 10 pieces are logs and phonics dominoes are a card tower. All the ways they want to play with reading and math manipualtives during reading and math, they now have a devoted time to do so.
- Student walk in the door excited to get started. Morning tubs have minimized our morning routine. Students don’t want to waste any time making lunch choices, putting away their folders, or stowing their backpacks because they know their time is already limited.
- After playing and talking and laughing, my friends come to the carpet and are ready to learn. Our first Daily 5 choices have been out-of-the-world lately.
- We’ve become a *little* more flexible. While I love morning tubs (and my 1st graders do too), sometimes it isn’t possible. We need to start early or there has been a change in the schedule. When that happens, we’ve learned to say – “Oh well!” It’s a special treat when morning tubs happen, but not expected.
Where Do I Get the Tubs?
Several years ago I feel in love with this clip top Sterilite tubs. They make the PERFECT storage container…so much so that I wrote a whole post about them here. I use these medium clip-top bins for morning tub bins. They are much smaller than the large bins and SUPER deep. They are perfect for storing lots of manipualtives, cards, or materials. You can snag the labels FREE here.
What’s In Our Morning Tubs?
Our morning tubs are filled with lots of manipualtives (reading and math). While students are ‘playing’, they are also engaging with academic tools in a non-threatening way. They have the chance to explore new words with our phonics dice, they can make silly sentences with our sentence puzzles, create words with our letter tiles, conjure difficult math problems with the base ten pieces, and create 16-sided shapes with our geoboards.
Through Donors Choose I requested this low shelf that stores our morning tubs and indoor recess items. I love having one space where the bins are so students can grab them and go!
We have A LOT of building resources in our tubs. While this can quickly branch into “indoor recess” type of material, students still don’t have full recess range of freedoms. Additionally, when students build, create, and collaborate they are active, talking, and building relationships. We love Tinker Toys because we can create spinning and moving machines!
Interlox are also a class favorite. At first my friends struggled with them because their natural reaction is to build up. Students quickly learn that if they only build up, their towers will topple. By building wide and creating a strong base, students learn that they can create intricate buildings with these tools!
MagnaTiles are THE favorite material in our morning tubs. These magnetic building blocks are amazing and students can create almost anything they want. From 2D shapes to mazes to 3D masterpieces, MagnaTiles are pretty awesome! With that said, they are incredibly expensive (thanks, Donors Choose!) and they are a beast to clean-up. Still, childhood joy and excitement wins, so the MagnaTiles stay!
My 1st graders also LOVE Story Cubes. Each set of cubes has a different theme (verbs, ways to move, places to visit). Students role 2-3 of the dice and combine them into a story. These dice are perfect for adding excitement to writing and build a nice bridge to work on writing!
Reuse, Reuse, Reuse
While our classroom has been blessed with lots of Morning Tub choices from Donors Choose, yard sales, and family donations, I routinely use materials I am also using for reading and math. Just starting with Morning Tubs? Check out some of my go-to tub items! 
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I absolutely LOVE this. I use it in preschool and I will definitely try it with my elementary students this year. Thanks for sharing.
I just sat down to start outlining what I intend my day to look like for the new year. Last year I struggled with the first 10-15 minutes of the morning as my students settled in and I got attendance and papers together. It always seemed a little crazy and doing “work” felt like a daily struggle. I’m so happy I stumbled upon this post. I am most definitely going to use morning tubs! Thank you for being so detailed!! Best of luck in your new year!
I remember my teachers doing this when I was younger!! not all of it and exactly this was, but the general ideas of it. Awesome idea!
I love having active morning work. Our students eat breakfast in our rooms so we have about 20 minutes that students need to be “entertained”. I have it set up as Math Monday – I rotate math games each week, Team Tuesday – some type of teamwork game floor puzzles are a favorite!, Word Wednesday – reading based games/activities, Think Thursday’s – problem solving games and activities, and Finish It/Free Choice Friday – students finish missing work if needed or they can have free choice time to play a game of choice with friends of their choosing. My kids love the variety.
Where are your sight word dominoes from? THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING THIS WONDERFUL IDEA! Can't wait to start it in August with my kiddos!
Wow! What a great idea! Thanks, I may use this in my sped K and 1st grade classroom this year!
I love this! Thanks for such a detailed post.
I saw a list in the post, but do you find that you struggle with coming up with things to put in the bins as the year progresses?
I LOVE this idea. My question is, do they try to continue to play with the base 10 blocks and other manipulatives in the same fashion as they do in you tubs when it comes time for math? How many tubs did you introduce at a time? I think I may want to try this in the next year in my own first grade class!
Thanks for a great idea!
I have been reading your posts for about 2 hours now and I'm in love. Thank you for all the great advice! Many of it can "trickle" down to Kindergarten so I love i! I want to use so many of your resources for next year! Than you so much!
Emily Peterson
K4/K5 Classroom Teacher
Milwaukee, WI
I came here for a different post but this caught my eye. Fantastic! I'm actually going to use this idea for getting my homeschooled kids to the table in the morning. One is always ready before the other and gets bored/cranky while waiting (even just a few minutes). I used to have some sort of seatwork ready while they were waiting – something fun that just got the mind working but this is even better! And I love the phonics blocks – I had never seen those before but perfect fun practice for my 1st grader. Thanks!
Hello! I change them out every 2-3 ish weeks, although sometimes I just change out 1-2 tubs each week – whatever I have time or ideas for!
Love this! Would like to try this when we return from spring break, but my kiddos choose their own seat each day. Trying to think how to manage this , w/o more work.
I LOVE this idea 🙂
I have a very active group of hands on boys this year. I can't wait to try this with them next week. I am tired of the morning work pages and having to correct all of them. I think this is a great idea and more meaningful!
Just started Morning Tubs with my 2nd graders this past week. They LOVE it! Do you switch out all of the bin materials every Friday or do some stay for 2 or more weeks?