Using Clothespins to Pick Centers

Hi! Jen Ross here... from Teacher by the Beach (formerly, The Teacher's Cauldron...which is why my pictures have my old blog button on them)

I'm here to show you just ONE of the ways that I use clothespins! I use them to pick my centers... it varies from year to year, but no matter the variation, one variable stays the same... the clothespins! Last year, this is how I had my center choices set up. The students all have numbers (you can read about my "NUMBERS" post HERE) and I write their numbers on the clips. They pick their reading center in the morning when they come in. They use their menu to check to see which center they haven't done yet and I can only have 3 students to a center.

And actually, last year I had 5 reading centers and 5 math centers....so the blue cards were the reading centers and the green cards were the math centers. So they had a clip with their number in blue for reading centers and a clip with their number in black to pick their math center. And my janitor at the end of the day just lined them up in number order on the baseboard for easy organization.

Here is how my center menu correlates...you can check out the post HERE on how I manage my small groups. 

Hope that gave you an idea of how else you could use clothespins...other than hanging up their beautiful artwork!