I wanted to spend some time making this article for my linky worth your while, so here are lots of not-so-random thoughts!
First, I am making these for my literacy work station shelves.  This set is for the reading work station shelf, so it can be taken to the table that matches the shelf color, or to the carpet to work.  I will be placing this in a binder as a center with everything inside.  Students are to match the animal pics with the sound that begins its name (I put an x-ray for the x sound if you do not use Zoo Phonics).  The animals go along with the animals in Zoo Phonics.  Two binders will be placed in the basket so that two pairs of students may do this activity.  Here is the link to the file.  Just click the pic…and remember, I love comments! I am working on a flip, read, and clip activity for sight words next 🙂 Stay tuned!
Also, I have been revisiting the Everything’s Kindergarten presentations from the Virtual Teaching Expo website, and Krissy Miner’s (Kindergarten Monkey Business)Literacy Centers presentation is a wonderful, simple guide to setting up centers! I would encourage new teachers to view all four presentation! Other presenters are Fran Kramer from Kindergarten Crayons, Hadar Maor from Miss Kindergarten , and Crystal Radke from Kreative in Kinder.  Every presentation was well done, and full of literacy and math ideas!
Finally, here is a pic of my centers planning sheet (I always do a word mock-up of what I will have in every area of my room since I am also a visual learner).  The task chart will have station cards below each color.  As with Krissy’s rotation method, the only cards that will move will be the owls at the top.  As each owl is moved to the next color column, the owl that “falls off the bed” goes back to red (or the beginning of the rotation)again.  How simple is that?!!! Inspiring, I know 🙂 Thank-you Krissy!
I love how you don’t have to change out the cards or the stations very often.  The only thing I left off are the “Must Do” baskets which will be on the top shelf just under the charts, and will have an owl tag on them to identify the must do basket for red, orange, yellow, and green ( I am just “giddy” about this, since I will be making little owl labels with polka-dots to hang from each basket by a pretty ribbon!lol).  I would share these tags, but they are not to be sold as a freebie.  I may put them on my Teacher’s Notebook site for .99 soon, though! To see the actual station offerings cards, click here to download the pdf with my mock-up…subject to change of course!

  As you can see, I have my task card pocket chart above the shelves the work station tubs will be stored on.  Obviously, you will have cards for stations that are not tubs like the magnetic letter station on your file cabinet, or the environmental print station on the front of your desk :), but I love tubs that can be removed and then put back after work is completed.  I will have cute little owl labels on all four colors of activities to make it easy to return items to the correct shelf.  The stations are set up to go along with choice activities as in the Daily 5 or Debbie Diller’s Literacy Work Stations.  I like parts of both of these, so I try to incorporate the best of both.  If you are a new teacher, it is not hard to come up with enough activities with materials already in your room, and the inexpensive shoe boxes from Walmart are perfect for storing lots of choices on your shelves.  I have had my boxes for 15 years or more! They are clear, and labels have been added and removed over the years.  This year’s labels will be polka-dots!

Whew…I love summer, so I’d better get my bullies some breakfast, take a walk, and get some other “less exciting” work done!  Here is Olivia with her girly glasses on! lol