We are on our 5th round of morning tubs, and my students still absolutely love this time in our day. It gives them a chance to socialize with other students in the morning, while being creative and using their imaginations.
What does my morning look like?
I get asked a lot about my schedule and how long all of this lasts. My students can start coming into the classroom at 8:00, but the tardy bell does not ring until 8:15. Some bring breakfast to the classroom as well. This makes it very difficult to do any type of whole group instruction first thing in the morning. Even if I could, I really think that the students need to come in and have some time to adjust to the day. After the students put their coats and backpacks away, they complete the Morning Work on their desks. Since the morning work follows the same type of format each morning, it really only takes them about 5-10 minutes to finish it. Then, they go to their tub for the morning. I post my Morning Tub rotation on the board, and we rotate each group every 3 days. This allows me to only have to switch out tubs every 18 school days. Around 8:30, we clean up our tubs and go over our morning work together. Then, we are ready to start our day with our Morning Meeting time.
What is in our Morning Tubs this time?
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I ordered these Quadpro Magnetic Blocks from Amazon. My own son also got a set for Christmas from my parents, and they are so much fun!
This set came with magnetic squares and triangles. The students have been so creative with these.
These will definitely come back out in another round of morning tubs.
In our next tub, I placed these winter themed coloring sheets from Creative Clips.
For our third tub, I purchased these Keva Brain Builder blocks.
The box came with these small wooden pieces and cards with items to make using the blocks.
My students are always thrilled when they get to build things. I do wish that these came with more wooden pieces, but the students are having to cooperate together to make the items.
Our fourth tub contains Rory’s Story Cubes. This is the original set, but they do have other sets of these cubes that I may look into purchasing.
I placed the Story Cubes along with a pad of writing paper in the tub. I gave them the option of deciding how many cubes to roll. I love that they have to be really creative in their writing to include each of the pictures that they rolled on the dice.
Our fifth and sixth tubs are repeat tubs of geoboards and pattern blocks. These math manipulatives never get old. The students love them.
This is definitely one of my students favorite times of the day.
Want to know what else we have done during Morning Tub time?
Here are the links to my other posts:
In the first tub, I placed my new 
The second tub is filled with Halloween erasers that I purchased from the Dollar Spot at Target two years ago. These seasonal erasers are always a great find and can be used for so many things. For the morning tub, I didn’t give the students a particular task for these. I just like to let their creativity take over. They have had so much fun making shapes, patterns, and pictures with these.
The third tub contains letter tiles. These tiles have all of the individual letters as well as common vowel pairs and word families. The letter tiles came with small magnetic boards, but cookie sheets would also work really well with these. I truly have no clue what brand these tiles are, but you could always just put regular 
My fourth tub contains 
I was so excited when I ordered this 
The sixth tub contains coloring pages. I included some primary type coloring pages that I downloaded for free from 
You can read about my first two rounds of Morning Tubs by clicking on the links below.
These are great for students to fill out prior to conferences. It really gives you an insight into how they see their school year.
Our second tub is a writing activity. I printed these picture cards with pictures that I had purchased from Shutterstock a couple years ago for my 
My next tub is filled with 
The next tub was kind of a last minute idea. I had some extra rolls of yarn in a cabinet that I knew I wouldn’t use anytime soon. I put these into a tub and am letting the students use it as they wish.
Some have cut out shapes. Some have glued pieces of yarn onto paper to make pictures. One group decided to make a spaghetti dinner. Even though it was a cute idea, it was messy. This tub definitely does not look neat and organized now, like it did in the picture above.
My last tub consists of 
It’s another great rotation of Morning Tubs. I will come back to share our next round with you in a couple of weeks. Are you using Morning Tubs? I’d love to hear your ideas as well 🙂
To me, this is my number one joy in being a teacher. I absolutely love to build strong relationships with students. I like to get to know their likes and dislikes, their interests, and their families. These relationships are SO important!
We also create 
What are your tips for building a relationship with your students?
