K-1 Library Centers During COVID-19

K-1 Library Centers During COVID-19?

Because so many of my K-1 library center materials and robots have to stay packed away this fall, I’ve invested some of my media budget into what I’m calling “kinder and firstie bags” to use during the upcoming COVID-19 school days. It’s really important to me to keep my students safe from germs AND continue my library centers. Each quart-sized, Ziploc freezer bag contains:

a 50-cent box of Crayola 24-count crayons
a Ticonderoga pencil
a big pink eraser
an Elmer’s glue stick
and a small canister of Play-Doh
a “warm fuzzy”

Everything except the Play-Doh came from Walmart. The Doh came from Amazon because I wanted the same color for everyone.

The Cost of Continuing K-1 Library Centers

Yeah… it was a lot of money. My cost was around $309 for 225 bags, but I got my principal’s okay. (Besides, I justified it to myself with a plan to collaborate. Read on!) If your funds are tighter than mine, you could definitely seek help from a Walmart or Dollar General grant. Or, maybe you could get a Donors Choose project going asap.

So, my intention in creating the individual bag system was to avoid sharing germs while sharing supplies. Plus. I kept thinking about my littles who would have trouble carrying their library books AND their personal supplies from their classrooms, ALL THE WAY across the school, to the library. I could image those poor kids spilling things only to have lost something that we really needed for centers. With my bags, I’ll know they have what they need, that pencils are sharpened, that there’s a good eraser, and so on.

What about Centers for the Big Kids?

Our older kids will be carrying their personal supplies to activity classes this year. In addition, many of their library centers are digital.So I think they should be good to go! I’ll just need to have some extra pencils on hand, I’m sure. On the other hand, the littles will have about all that they can handle just remembering how to travel down the hallway in a line. This will be especially true when lots of other classes are passing in the halls and we’re all trying to maintain social distance! Whew…all in all, I simply hope my little bags will just save all of us some stress.

Collaboration by the Bag

Each little bag will be labeled with the teacher’s name and the student’s name. These will be available for check-out to the other activity teachers and to our counselor throughout the week. I’ll be grouping each class’s bags into a specific tub labeled with the teacher’s name, so they’ll be easy to transport from activity classroom to classroom.

K-1 Library Center Materials

As the school year goes along, I’m planning to add inexpensive manipulatives to the bags. I’ve been cooking up library center ideas for K-1 that involve using ordinary things like rubber bands, q-tips, marbles, dice, popsicle sticks, and pipe cleaners. The ideas are a mixture of library skills and easy makerspace activities that I’ll be sharing in the coming weeks. By the way, I’m not planning to add anything that has to be cleaned or that costs too much since I’ll need about 200 sets to keep each bag ready to go. Some things like the dice and the marbles may get recycled for next year’s library centers. We’ll have to wait and see.

Are Library Centers Worth It?

Yes, I think my front-end work will pay off! You’ve got to know that I really believe in library centers, especially for kindergarten and first grade, if I’m willing to go to all of this trouble and expense! (For the record, I LOVE library centers for ALL grades — and the kids do, too!) In this case, I hope my summertime efforts will pay off with lots of joyful learning in the library this fall. Stay tuned to That Library Girl, and I’ll definitely let you know how it goes!