There are a lot of centres in kindergarten, with something new to explore, discover and try all the time! But this year, our students have taken a keen interest in using our light table on a regular basis. If you don't have a light table in your classroom, it's, by far, one of the BEST tools you can have!
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| Playing a game of dominoes is so much fun on the light table! |
Some of the best resources I recently discovered are these translucent loose parts from Wintergreen Learning Materials. The sets you see above, including buttons, bugs, gems and dominoes are from the Light Table Manipulative Centre set.
Our students also enjoy creating with these Rainbow Magformers. I love how open ended they are!
There is such great discussion around what the children are building, how they built it, what would happen if..., etc. These are ideal for STEAM building in your class!
When we want our students to focus on the characteristics of 2-dimensional shapes, I traced large shapes onto overhead transparencies. They I simply added a basket of light table pattern blocks for the students to sort. Once again, lots of great conversations taking place here:
"These ones all have 3 sides so I know they are triangles!" A.A.
"This is round so it's a circle." J.C.
Last Christmas I introduced the students to subitizing games on the overhead. This is a picture of my Roll-A-Santa game where you roll the dot die, pick up the corresponding piece and build the picture! First one to build a complete picture wins!
I simply printed the game on transparencies for use on the light table.
You can find this game (and lots more!) in my Fun with Dice (Math Games) pack on TpT.
Since we have been focusing on sorting for the past few weeks, I wanted to create some sorting mats for the beautiful transparent buttons that I left at the light table.
You can download these mats for FREE here.
Do you have a light table in your room? How do your students use it?
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