Spend Less Time Preparing Your Centers With These Tips

Centers rock! They’re a great way to differentiate your lessons.

Centers break up the monotony of the classroom. They incorporate all the hands-on fun stuff that kids love: games, creativity, manipulatives, and more. Centers allow students to move beyond textbooks and worksheets.

With so much to love, what’s there not to like about centers?

Not all classroom activities are no-prep. Some learning activities require preparation, especially centers. Are you a teacher looking for time-saving ideas, laminating hacks, and tips to reduce the amount of time you spend cutting, prepping, and getting your class stations ready? Have you thought about getting a laminator, wondered what plastic sheets to get, or considered getting a machine to cut out the pieces? Check out the ideas for making laminating, cutting, and prepping centers easier.

Creating and preparing all of the materials to keep your centers fresh takes time…sometimes, a lot of time. When you’re planning your centers, it’s important to set yourself up for success by setting your centers up the right way.

There are also some things you can do to spend less time preparing your center materials. So, let’s talk about what you can do to spend less time prepping your centers.

Minimize the work involved in preparing centers.

The biggest way to actually save time preparing centers is to plan centers that require less prep. Look for no prep and low prep activities.

Look for no prep and low prep activities.

Buddy reading and independent reading just need books.
Centers like stamping or building spelling words don’t need a lot. Just swap out the words.
Look for centers that don’t require lots of complicated cutting. Straight-line cuts are easier than curvy shapes.
There are lots of different print-and-go options, like these no-prep math games.

You can also reduce your prep time in the long run by setting up an organized filing system for all of your center materials. That way, you can prep once and then use the same center for years to come.

Invest in the right equipment.

You probably have a laminator at school, but I prefer to laminate center materials at home. Since center materials get a lot of wear and tear, I think they hold up better with a thicker lamination, and I have found that the lamination doesn’t peel off nearly as much when I’ve used a home laminator. I’d much rather prep centers ONCE and only once.

If you’re going to be laminating at home, I recommend the following equipment (psst…this post includes affiliate links):

This one is a pretty big splurge. I’m not going to lie. It’s expensive, and it’s definitely not something you have to have, but if you hate cutting out all the pieces, a ScanNCut machine is AWESOME! It will cut out your centers.

Recruit help when you’re preparing centers.

We all know that teachers are BUSY…really busy. One way to lighten the load is to recruit help. There are lots of things that we have to do ourselves: grading, lesson planning, etc. Center prep isn’t confidential.

Laminating, cutting, and prepping centers are all tasks that other people can help do.

If your school has an after-school program, ask a few older students if they’d like to help.
Ask for parent volunteers. At some schools, parents can be trained to laminate. If your school doesn’t let parents laminate, parents can still help cut.
Cutting is a great job for parents who want to help but can’t volunteer during the school day. You can send things home to be cut out and returned.

Maximize your time.

Help is awesome when you’ve got it. Let’s be honest, though. Sometimes it’s just you. Even if you don’t have any help, you can still maximize your time.

Double up on the laminators. Home laminators are pretty cheap. If you do a lot of laminating, run two at the same time.
Try overlapping laminating sheets and taping them together. Make sure the sealed end of each pouch will be the end that feeds into the laminator.

You probably want to pre-cut any pieces you’re laminating in a school laminator, but it’s usually not necessary if you’re using a home laminator.
When you do need to pre-cut, dab the back of any small pieces of paper with a glue stick before placing them on the lamination. It will keep them from sliding around.
Take it with you. If you’re going to be waiting at an appointment or at your kid’s practice, it’s easy enough to cut things out while you wait.

Make preparing your centers fun.

Whether you’ve got help or you’re on your own, center prep can be tedious. This tip isn’t really a time-saver, but it’s probably my favorite tip.

Make it fun. Turn up the music, put on a funny movie, or invite a friend over to chat while you work. Get a snack and settle in. It’s so much more fun to prep your centers when you’re comfy and relaxed.