Want an alternative to Morning Work? Over Winter Break, I took time to reflect on what was working in my classroom and what still needed tweaking. Slowly throughout January, I’ve been taking little steps to fill the ‘holes’. I’ll definitely be sharing more about these holes in the coming weeks, and today I wanted to share about one change in our classroom -I decided to have a morning work alternative. So here we are! From morning work to morning tubs– how I made this happen in my classroom.
Throughout the post, you’ll find Amazon Affiliate links, which means Amazon tosses a few nickels my way if you purchase something through that link, at no extra cost to you, that help keep my corner of cyber-space running and helps fund giveaways!
Why A Morning Work Alternative?
I love this group of 1st graders but they are very different than my first group. Being the first time, I’ve been in a grade twice, it’s been fun to see the ‘personality’ of this group. My friends love building, drawing, creating, and moving. We sometimes forget to unstack our chairs (and don’t realize until our 6th grade chair stacker comes at 3:15); we really like being in charge of other people’s lives (i.e. we’re bossy), and we struggle to share. It has been a fun year, but exhausting at times. Unlike last year, I’ve had to explicitly model social skills – how to say excuse me, how to ask to join a group, how to play kindly at recess, how to walk by someone without touching them, etc.
With how much practice we’ve needed to interact with each other (especially in informal, social situations), I began reading The Power of Play (Amazon Affiliate Link). It’s a really easy read revolving around the idea that play sets the foundation for our later interactions with the world. It poses play not as an ‘extra’ but as a necessity and that play has been substituted for other things – iPads, TVs, toys, etc. It was a convincing read, a well-crafted narrative sharing the research of play. While reading Elkind, I looked at my schedule and asked – “Where can I incorporate more play into our already busy day?” Turning morning work into morning tubs was the answer.
What Are the Procedures of a Morning Work Alternative?
Our Reading Block starts at 8:40 AM and I respect (and NEED) the full time. Depending on how long our school-wide Morning Meeting lasts, we have 8-10 minutes of morning-tub time. Each Friday afternoon, I switch-out materials and place a tub on each table for Monday morning. After Monday, the tubs are stored in an extra cubby and someone from each table is responsible for grabbing a tub they have not yet used. (If groups fight over tubs, they cannot participate in morning tubs that day.)
As we walk in, I set our magnetic timer for as long as we have and students work together to create, build, imagine, and laugh. Students may use the materials at their table or they may independent/partner read. Unlike indoor recess, they may not choose any activity or any group. I place students very strategically at tables. I want them to learn and play with the friends around them. (Note – my tables all have 5-6 friends, so I try to place enough materials for 3 friends in each tub to encourage cooperative play.)
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?
Even in a small amount of time I have noticed a few, important shifts in out day.
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!
If you are looking for other ideas to keep your Morning Tubs fresh, check out this blog post where I share over 50 of our go-to morning tubs!
Friends, I do believe in the power of play and believe it has an important place in our classroom. I’m excited to see the opportunities and doors Morning Tubs open in our classroom. While we are just beginning, I can’t wait to see how far my 1st grade friends will come in the next weeks and months. So, how do you fill those morning moments? Have you ever tried morning tubs or exploratory tubs before? If so, I would love to hear your experience and ideas. If not, is this something your friends need or would respond positively to? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I am a little late to the morning tub game, but I plan on implementing them soon! Students are allowed to be dropped off at 7:30, however school does not start until 8:00. Each elementary student is given free breakfast if they choose. Most of my students eat, but not all. I plan on giving students this time after they eat to do morning tubs!
WOW! What a great idea. Our school has an in class breakfast program and about 80% of my students either eat a school provided breakfast or bring something from home. This makes it almost impossible for any type of morning work. I think this is just what I need. QUESTION: Did you have any problems with your students transitioning from playing with these items to using them as learning tools?
Honestly, I haven’t. Early on I established that during morning tubs, the materials are tools for play and exploring. During math/reading, they are tools for learning. If we get mixed up then they have to stay tools for learning and that’s no fun!
Where did you get the word tiles that have the beginning letter at the end?
Hey Katherine! They are called Phonics Tiles and can be found on Amazon. 🙂
I love these ideas. I teach Kindergarten and use morning tubs to help develop fine motor skills. All of my tubs have a fine motor focus for developing pencil grasp, hand strength, dexterity etc. When time permits we also do some finger gym exercises when tubs are packed up. My kids love it and they get a chance to have a chat while I’m marking the roll and doing any last minute prep. They unpack much quicker and quieter so they can get more time with the tubs and are ready to listen and learn when they get to the mat after pack away time.
I’m a new teacher and I love your blog! I teach first grade this year too and try to use some of the things I see here, although as a new teacher I think you understand how difficult it might be.. I love this idea on the place of morning work! So is it basically “educational game”? I have a ton of word and math games I suspect I could use for this!!
I Love everything that you do! What do the kids do if they cannot participate in morning tubs because they didn’t clean or argued?
They can make our traditional morning tub choices – reading, writing, completing classroom tasks (assigned by me).
I love the fact that your morning tubs are quick and also geared toward helping your friends improve their social skills. I think with the amount of testing that kids undergo nowadays we tend to push play aside for the sake of getting to everything in our pacing guides or lesson plans. So I love your few minutes a day to give the kids time to play and work on their social skills. Thanks for sharing!
I introduced flexible seating and the morning tubs this year. Love both but they don’t have aassigned seats so they can select a center and then write it on a card so they are sure to swap each day. Still some issues with sharing and interacting nicely but it’s been a great alternative andnsomething I hope to expand on next year.
As a parent, as well as a teacher-in-training, this post makes me feel like crying. My son just finished first grade and he hated that morning work worksheet so much. He is one of the most naturally curious, enthusiastic people I know, but he now thinks of himself as someone who is always bored. “Other people get excited. I’m more like Garfield,” he says. But this is NOT who he is – this is just how school has made him feel. The crux of it all was the morning work. He dreaded getting up because he had to school, and dreaded going to school because of the morning work. Then there would often be discipline and emails home from the teacher because he wasn’t focusing on the morning work. After that, he says, the day got better – but as his parent, I say that’s a lot of very rough mornings. It’s summer and we’re trying to help our son have a “detox” with hands-on activities and social, artistic fun to renew his curiosity, and it’s already helping him be so much more like his old self. I wish I had engaged with his teacher more on the morning work issue, though. I thought it was just a modern necessity – every classroom seems to have it, and I thought I’d be a squeaky wheel for suggesting that my kid couldn’t or shouldn’t be asked to do what every other kid seems to be finding success with. But morning tubs? So brilliant, so worthwhile, such a clear and meaningful alternative. You are showing me that there is nothing sacred about the morning worksheet. I think my son would have thrived in your classroom. Thank you for your great work.
I love my morning tubs, I have close to 25. Almost all of them are a different type of “building” motor skill activity, and my class loves them. I changed the name to morning brain boxes so my administration will understand a little more the concept! :o).
I love this idea!! Thank you for sharing. Do you have visual directions for your morning tubs? If so, would you mind sharing? Thank you 🙂
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66 Responses
Can you give more info on the beads, marbles and dice? How are these being used? What are the kids doing?
Hey Lisa! I’ve shared more about those tools here: http://brownbagteacher.com/morning-tub-ideas/
I am a little late to the morning tub game, but I plan on implementing them soon! Students are allowed to be dropped off at 7:30, however school does not start until 8:00. Each elementary student is given free breakfast if they choose. Most of my students eat, but not all. I plan on giving students this time after they eat to do morning tubs!
WOW! What a great idea. Our school has an in class breakfast program and about 80% of my students either eat a school provided breakfast or bring something from home. This makes it almost impossible for any type of morning work. I think this is just what I need. QUESTION: Did you have any problems with your students transitioning from playing with these items to using them as learning tools?
Honestly, I haven’t. Early on I established that during morning tubs, the materials are tools for play and exploring. During math/reading, they are tools for learning. If we get mixed up then they have to stay tools for learning and that’s no fun!
Where did you get the word tiles that have the beginning letter at the end?
Hey Katherine! They are called Phonics Tiles and can be found on Amazon. 🙂
I love these ideas. I teach Kindergarten and use morning tubs to help develop fine motor skills. All of my tubs have a fine motor focus for developing pencil grasp, hand strength, dexterity etc. When time permits we also do some finger gym exercises when tubs are packed up. My kids love it and they get a chance to have a chat while I’m marking the roll and doing any last minute prep. They unpack much quicker and quieter so they can get more time with the tubs and are ready to listen and learn when they get to the mat after pack away time.
I’m a new teacher and I love your blog! I teach first grade this year too and try to use some of the things I see here, although as a new teacher I think you understand how difficult it might be.. I love this idea on the place of morning work! So is it basically “educational game”? I have a ton of word and math games I suspect I could use for this!!
I Love everything that you do! What do the kids do if they cannot participate in morning tubs because they didn’t clean or argued?
They can make our traditional morning tub choices – reading, writing, completing classroom tasks (assigned by me).
I love the fact that your morning tubs are quick and also geared toward helping your friends improve their social skills. I think with the amount of testing that kids undergo nowadays we tend to push play aside for the sake of getting to everything in our pacing guides or lesson plans. So I love your few minutes a day to give the kids time to play and work on their social skills. Thanks for sharing!
I introduced flexible seating and the morning tubs this year. Love both but they don’t have aassigned seats so they can select a center and then write it on a card so they are sure to swap each day. Still some issues with sharing and interacting nicely but it’s been a great alternative andnsomething I hope to expand on next year.
As a parent, as well as a teacher-in-training, this post makes me feel like crying. My son just finished first grade and he hated that morning work worksheet so much. He is one of the most naturally curious, enthusiastic people I know, but he now thinks of himself as someone who is always bored. “Other people get excited. I’m more like Garfield,” he says. But this is NOT who he is – this is just how school has made him feel. The crux of it all was the morning work. He dreaded getting up because he had to school, and dreaded going to school because of the morning work. Then there would often be discipline and emails home from the teacher because he wasn’t focusing on the morning work. After that, he says, the day got better – but as his parent, I say that’s a lot of very rough mornings. It’s summer and we’re trying to help our son have a “detox” with hands-on activities and social, artistic fun to renew his curiosity, and it’s already helping him be so much more like his old self. I wish I had engaged with his teacher more on the morning work issue, though. I thought it was just a modern necessity – every classroom seems to have it, and I thought I’d be a squeaky wheel for suggesting that my kid couldn’t or shouldn’t be asked to do what every other kid seems to be finding success with. But morning tubs? So brilliant, so worthwhile, such a clear and meaningful alternative. You are showing me that there is nothing sacred about the morning worksheet. I think my son would have thrived in your classroom. Thank you for your great work.
I love my morning tubs, I have close to 25. Almost all of them are a different type of “building” motor skill activity, and my class loves them. I changed the name to morning brain boxes so my administration will understand a little more the concept! :o).
I love this idea!! Thank you for sharing. Do you have visual directions for your morning tubs? If so, would you mind sharing? Thank you 🙂