Where to Start with Media Center Stations?

I've discussed media center imagination stations a few times on here, but I've not discussed where to get the resources.

If you have funds and would like to start planning your media center stations read this post to find out what I have in my stations. I've included links when you click on the photos below to either amazon or lakeshore learning where you can purchase most of the items listed.

If you do not have funds, please consider reading my previous post about DonorsChoose and how you can easily write a project for materials that are needed.

For K-2

Lego Building Base Plates

These are perfect for making any table into a lego table or even attach them to a wall to make a lego wall!

You could also get a Lego Table. This one is not as expensive as you may expect and it has storage for the legos!

You can also purchase legos on amazon, but I would suggest sending an email out to teachers and possibly asking parents if they have any at home that they would like to donate. Yard sales are also a great place to pick up legos. 

This is the exact train table that I have. It comes with the train and three red tubs for storing the train set under the table.

The car carpet is perfect for students to take the cars to and make up their own stories with police cars, regular cars and more.

Here are a perfect set of cars for the cars rug. You can usually find some monster trucks at the dollar store that would be a fun addition as well.

A great station for K-2 students is letter magnets. Have students write sentences or words from a story. You can have them use cookie sheets at a table if you do not already have a magnet area.

Wikki Stix are so fun! Students can use these with the alphabet cards or they can write their own names or character names from stories. 

Puppets are the perfect addition to stations/center choices in the library. Students can retell fairy tales and familiar stories. 

Students visit the felt board to retell stories. I've made characters from felt from stories that we tell regularly and are favorites from books. For example, I've made the pigeon, the bus and the bus driver from Mo Willems story. I've also made spider man and batman. I tell students that they can tell their own versions of the stories and what would happen if spider man was in the story of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus? Even 3rd-5th graders love the superheros and retelling their own versions of stories. 

There are also premade felt/flannel sets that you can purchase for the station.

 

I consider the these sewing sets great for Makerspaces for K-2 students. 

These alphabet bean bags are great for K-2 to put them in alphabetical order and cvc words. I sewed my bean bags, but was a summer project that took forever. You should probably just purchase a set. 

For 3-5

I also use the lego table, felt board and train table for 3-5. 

You can get the normal K'nex, but I like the Kid K'nex for the time that students have while in the media center.

I have one station labeled "games" and they can then choose from any of the board games. I picked a lot of these up from yard sales.

          

For makerspace with 3rd-5th grade I have 3 separate stations. A loom station, a beads station (students can make bracelets with pipe cleaners and perler beads), and origami with some of the origami books from the library.

Students LOVE the makerspace stations!

Ozobots are a crowd pleaser! These little robots follow along marker lines that students draw. I keep a roll of white butcher block paper in the media center for students to use at this station.

Dash is always the first station to fill up. Students use an iPad with Dash to learn about coding.

Cubelets are so engaging with sensors, lights, rollers, and more. The booklet has directions for creating robots sets that students can use or they can make their own robot.

I also allow students to use iPad apps for digital storytelling and they may choose to go to their chromebooks and use code.org or overdrive to read ebooks.