Back to School Morning Tub Ideas for Kindergarten

_{In this blog post: Find ideas for hands-on kindergarten morning tubs for the beginning of the school year.}

As a new kindergarten teacher, I really struggled with morning work in Kindergarten. It felt like chaos each day as I had students arriving at all different times, many struggling to complete the pencil and paper activities while early finishers bounced around the room.

When I made the decision to switch to morning tubs in kindergarten, our morning routine quickly became a favorite part of the day for everyone.

As academic expectations for our young learners rise and free play is all but erased from the school day, we as teachers know the importance of working social skills and fine motor skills into our kindergarten classrooms. Morning work tubs are the perfect way to reign in the morning chaos and get your kindergarten students excited to start a full day of learning.

In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at what morning tubs are, why they are a great way to start your day, and some of my favorite ideas for back to school morning tubs for Kindergarten.

What are morning tubs?

Morning tubs, also often called morning work tubs, morning bins, or task boxes, are hands-on activities teachers can use to create “soft starts” in their morning routine. They are often filled with STEM materials, fine motor activities, and yes, even academic math and literacy centers for play-based learning.

Morning tubs can be completely open-ended as just a box of manipulatives like snap cubes or pattern blocks.

They are also a great way to combine purposeful play and academic skills allowing students to practice and review (and it’s so fun that they don’t even realize that they’re learning)!

You can read more about our morning tub routine in this blog post: Everything You Need To Know About Morning Tubs

The Benefits of Morning Tubs in Kindergarten

There are SO many benefits to starting morning tubs in Kindergarten. These include:

• Giving students a soft start to the school day
• Creating an opportunity for purposeful play
• Practicing social skills and academic skills in a non-threatening way
• Building fine motor skills
• Working on problem-solving skills through play
• Only requiring basic classroom supplies and manipulatives!

Read more about the benefits of morning tubs in this blog post:  6 Benefits of Morning Tubs You Need to Know

Morning Tub Materials

When preparing your morning tub materials at the beginning of the school year, these are some of my favorite manipulatives to have on hand:

• Plastic bins (I loved using plastic shoe boxes!)
• snap cubes
• pattern blocks
• magnetic letters
• dry-erase marker and whiteboards
• play dough
• pom poms
• mini and regular popsicle sticks
• dice and spinners
• mini erasers or counters
• pipe cleaners and pony beads

Open-Ended Morning Tub Ideas

Open-ended morning tubs are great for the beginning of the school year in Kindergarten because they allow students to explore materials without any expectations. I like to have a mix of open-ended morning tubs and morning tub task card activities available when I introduce our morning tub routine at the beginning of the year.

Some ideas for open-ended morning tubs include:

• Blocks
• Magnetic tiles
• Brainflakes
• hashtag blocks
• dramatic play materials

You can get I Can cards for open-ended morning tubs that match the I Can cards in my morning tubs for the year here:

Back to School Morning Tubs for Kindergarten

If you’re wanting to begin morning tubs in your kindergarten classroom, the Kindergarten Morning Tubs for August are a great resource to help you get started. This resource includes 24 back to school morning bins that combine purposeful play, fine motor practice, and academic skills for our little learners.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s included in the Kindergarten August Morning Tubs.

Playdough Letters

Play dough is one of my absolute favorite manipulatives for morning work tubs because students love it and it is such a great way to build those fine motor skills. With the Playdough Letters bin, students will practice forming letters using dough.

As kindergarten teachers, we know that our students begin the year all over the place academic-wise! The great thing about this activity is that students can complete the activity regardless of their literacy skills. This is so important when choosing morning tub activities for our young learners.

Pom-Pom Pictures

Pom pom pictures are a fun way to build those fine motor skills! Just add colorful pom poms and tongs or tweezers (I love these hand-shaped tongs). Students will match pom poms to the school themed pictures.

Magnetic Letter Match

This morning tub activity is another great way to expose our students to uppercase and lowercase letters without placing the expectation that they will enter kindergarten with any letter knowledge on them. For this activity, just add magnetic letters! Students will match uppercase and lowercase magnetic letters to the bus windows.

Magnetic Letter Word Building

The Magnetic Letter Word Building tub is a like an advanced version of the letter matching tub, but it still doesn’t require students to have any background knowledge.

Students will use the magnetic letters to build the school-themed words. This is a great way to practice letter discrimination and get students use to working with letters to build words.

Cover by Code Letters

The Cover by Code morning tub exposes kindergarten students to alphabet letters, but is really working on visual discrimination. Students will be working on discriminating between the uppercase and lowercase letters and covering them according to the code.

Playdough Numbers

Similar to Playdough Letters, the Playdough Numbers bin is a fun way to work on fine motor skills. It also allows students to begin exploring number sense if they’re ready by proving a ten frame for them to count out balls of dough to match the numbers (P.S. Morning tub activities like this make great math centers as well!)

Crayon Color Sorting

The Crayon Color Sorting tub is one of my absolute favorite centers from the Back to School Kindergarten Morning Tubs! Students will practice color words by sorting objects to the crayons by color.

Letter Formation Cards

These Letter Formation Cards are truly open-ended. Just add your favorite manipulatives! Students can practice forming the letters using mini erasers, counters, buttons, wikki sticks, etc. This also means that you can use these task cards in multiple bins – just add different manipulatives to each bin.

Alphabet Puzzle Mats

Puzzles are a great way to make practicing important skills fun. These puzzle mats include a few different letters skills to allow for easy differentiation.

Cube Towers

There is just something about building a snap cube tower that our students absolutely go crazy for! For the Cube Towers tub, students will stack cubes to match the numbers on their mats. This is another great activity to add in to your math centers as well!

Name Building Practice

So many of our little learners start the year unable to write – and sometimes even unable to recognize – their own name. These name building mats are editable to allow you to type students’ names right onto them! Then, they can use magnetic letters or letter tiles to practice building their name using the mat as a model. Bonus: You can also use these mats to practice sight words!

P.S. Want to make this reusable instead? Write students’ names on painters tape and stick it on to the laminated mat. Peel it off when you switch out your morning tub activities!

Extend a Pattern

This Extend a Pattern tub is a fun way to work with manipulatives while assessing your incoming kindergarten students’ math skills. Recognizing and extending are an important math skill that, unfortunately, our math curriculum doesn’t always touch on, so adding it in as a morning tub activity makes sure our students still get practice with it.

Gumball Matching Sets

For this activity, students will count the gumballs in the machines and then create equal groups. I love open-ended counting activities like this Gumball Matching Sets tub because you can really use any manipulative you have. Pom poms are great for fine motor practice, but you can also use circle counters, bottle caps, or play dough as the counters.

This tub is great because it helps students practice 1-to-1 counting and number sense without needing to recognize numbers. 

Scissor Cutting Practice

Scissor cutting practice is one of those fine motor activities that seems a little silly. Just cutting? Really? But it is SO important for our little learners, especially when they may not have much experience (or any) with using scissors before.

Roll, Count, and Cover

This Roll, Count, and Cover tub allows for easy differentiation for our students. Students will roll and die and then either cover the matching die or the matching number on their mat.

Chain Link Counting

My students have always gone absolutely crazy over plastic chain links. I personally love them because they are amazing for fine motor skills! For this tub, students will make plastic link chains to match the numbers.

Don’t have plastic links and don’t want to buy them? No worries! You can also use pipe cleaners and pony beads. Students will simply string pony beads onto the pipe cleaners to match the numbers.

Alphabet Link Up

I told you I love those plastic chain links! For this activity, students will use plastic links to either connect the uppercase and lowercase letter or the letter and the letter sound picture.

However, again, if you don’t have plastic links and don’t want to deal with them, you don’t have to! This can easily become just a matching activity.

Color Sorting

Another fun pom pom morning tub activity! This one asks students to sort pom poms by color. This tub is a fun way to expose students to colors, color words, and sorting in a play-based way.

Magnetic Numbers

For the Magnetic Numbers morning tub, students will count the school supplies and match the magnetic numbers to their task cards. If you don’t have magnetic numbers, you can simply have students use a dry-erase marker to write the number.

If your students aren’t quite ready for matching numbers, you can also use these task cards as a number sense activity. Just have students count out small manipulatives to match the amount.

Clip a Letter

Clothespins are wonderful for building fine motor skills! The Clip a Letter morning tub is a fun way to work on visual discrimination with letters. If you don’t have clothespins, you can have students cover the letters with snap cubes or counters.

Search and Cover Shapes

Recognizing 2D shapes is an early kindergarten math skill, but it can be hard to find ways to practice throughout the school year. For this tub, students will practice visual discrimination by searching for the 2D shapes and covering them on their mat.

Cube Letters

Before our students can recognize and write letters, it’s still important to expose them to alphabet letters and allow them to explore those letters through play as much as possible. This Cube Letters activity allows students to explore letters and begin forming them without requiring any background knowledge – this makes it a perfect back to school morning tub activity for every level of student!

Alphabet Puzzles

Again, allowing students to explore letters and practice visual discrimination and letter recognition without the need for any background knowledge is SO important at the beginning of kindergarten! These alphabet puzzles are a fun way to help our students practice these important skills.

Count and Match Puzzles

For this morning tub activity, students will count the objects and match the numbers. The great thing about play-based morning tubs is that they allow students to explore and try out new skills in a non-threatening way. Some students may not necessarily be ready to count and match numbers, but they may choose to work with students who do have those skills and, in doing so, expose themselves to these math concepts.

Get the August morning tubs on TpT here: Kindergarten Morning Tubs for Back to School.

Kindergarten Morning Tub Activities for the Year

Want to make morning tubs the easiest part of your morning routine? The Kindergarten Morning Tubs for the Year bundle gives you low prep, hands-on morning tub activities for the entire year!

The monthly skills were thoughtfully chosen to allow for differentiation, repetition, and review of important kindergarten math and literacy skills. Each of the 24 tubs combines academic skills with fine motor skills.

This resource was perfect for my kindergarten classroom! The activities were engaging, age-appropriate, and easy to implement.

“This resource was perfect for my kindergarten classroom! The activities were engaging, age-appropriate, and easy to implement. My students stayed interested and were able to practice important skills while having fun. I really appreciate how clear and organized the materials are—prep time was minimal, which is always a huge plus.

The visuals are bright and kid-friendly, and the directions are simple enough for my students to follow with little support. I definitely recommend this to any kindergarten teacher looking for a meaningful and ready-to-use resource!” -Deyanira D.

With this resource, you get:

✔️24 low prep morning work tubs each month

✔️I Can cards to support independence

✔️Color and black and white options

✔️Easy printing options

Plus, you can easily implement these morning tub activities during other parts of your day! Take it from Lisa T. “This is a great resource. My students absolutely love it. I use it in small groups and for early finishers to help reinforce skills that we have already learned this year, but will also use it next year to introduce skills to my next set of kiddos.”

Start your year off right with engaging activities right at your fingertips 👉 Kindergarten Morning Tubs for the Year