Why use Morning Bins instead of morning work?
Morning bins give you and your students a nice soft start to the day! Morning bin activities give students a purposeful morning activity to do while offering them a calm start to the school day. Your students will build social skills and it allows students to ease into the day. Do you like to come into school and get straight to business? Or do you say hi to your teacher bestie, sip your favorite morning beverage, and ease into your work day. Morning bins help your students ease into their work day with low prep, high engagement, and meaningful activities to choose from.
Morning Bins Instead of Morning Work Saves You Time!
Using morning bins cuts down on prep and paper work for you!
I do not prep, plan, collect, or grade morning work! What do I do instead? Free Choice Morning Bins!!! I prep them ONCE every few months and I’m done. Let’s work smarter, not harder! Once your morning bin routine is established your students will know just what to do when they arrive in the morning. No prepping, making copies, explaining directions, correcting work. Doesn’t that sound great? What are you going to do with all of this extra time? (Leave work at work I hope! But that’s a blog post for another day!)
What are Morning Bins?
Wondering what I put in my Morning Bins? First of all they don’t have to be actual bins. Baskets, boxes, 10 drawer carts, anything you have will work. I bet you already have most of the items you’d need for the bins around your classroom. I fill my bins with Lego, play dough, geoboards, pattern blocks, beads, hashtag blocks, circle flakes, connecting cubes, tracing lines/dry erase mazes, connecting cubes, and more. All of my morning bins are fun, fine motor activities.
When to do Morning Bins
In my school I have about 20 minutes at the start of each day as bussers and walkers are trickling in and the first learning block starts. Some students are eating breakfast, they all unpack and make lunch choices, I take attendance and check folders for notes. During this unstructured transition time, before we start our academic day – students are free to choose any morning bin they’d like and work on it until the structured part of our day gets started.
Why use Morning Bins in your classroom?
Why? More like why not! Morning Bins give students a purposeful morning activity to do while still offering them a soft start to the day. It cuts down on prep work and paper work for you! It builds fine motor skills while having fun. And, they allow students to practice social skills and while they ease into their day while still having structure and routine.
I fill my morning tubs with fine motor activities for the students to do. Using fine motor activities in the morning bins helps develop fine motor skills which in turn builds strength with other tasks such as writing. The activities in these morning bins Improves hand/eye coordination, dexterity and spatial awareness as well as develops finger strength to hold pencils properly for writing. The activities build coordination that carries over to letter writing. It allows students the opportunity to practice visual-special skills while also working on focus and concentration. All while having a fun soft start to the day.
How to use Morning Bins in your classroom?
How do I set up morning tubs? I spent the first days practicing rules, expectations, and routines. In the beginning I give explicit instructions on how to use each bin and give students time to explore. I introduce 3 to 4 morning tubs a day during. Then I break the students into groups and let them rotate through to try the new morning tubs. We practice expectations such as how to choose a bin and how many students can share and routines including when and how to clean up.
Once all of the morning bin activities, routines and expectations have been introduced and practiced we use them everyday! I like to use a large timer to help everyone know when to clean up. I make sure all bins have task cards to give the kids some guidance and direction.
Take Back Your Mornings! Save Yourself Hours of Prep and Planning!
I’ve saved countless hours of my life since I’ve stopped giving morning work and switched to morning bins! I prep the task cards once every few months and that’s it! No copies, no planning, no collecting and no correcting!
Morning bins give a nice soft start to the day, are low prep for you, and are still highly engaging and skill building for your students. Click the link HERE to download your FREE sample of what I’m using in my classroom!
If you loved this idea be sure to check my Editable Word Work!
