Embedding Life Skills in the Kitchen Center

It's been awhile, but I'm back! Hope everyone had a lovely winter break. Over break I did a lot of thinking about how to work on my skills in the classroom, and I also wanted to address them in a way that felt natural and play-based. So, with some inspiration from others these are three new tasks I came up with for my students to do while at the kitchen/home living center. 

Here's the drawer set I use to store each task. The top for utensil sorting, the middle for table setting, and the bottom for food sorting (by color). 

I picked up some simple utensil sorting trays at Walmart and created fork, spoon, and knife labels on Boardmaker. This way my students have a visual of where to sort each item.

Place mat template found here!

I had seen the idea for place settings like these on Considerate Classroom awhile ago and loved it. So, I created something similar with the help of a template I found online (link above). This task has helped my students match item to picture and begin to expressively identify different utensils/plate/cup. 

The last task is a file folder where the students have to sort pictures of food by color. I adapted this activity from this freebie. 

Overall, my students are responding really well to each task, and loved being introduced to each one. I'm sure I'll change them as they start to master them. If you're interested click here for the drawer labels I created and here for the utensil sorting labels.