Great tool for a learning center!

learning_palette_001I bought a Learning Palette to work with my daughter and decided to take it out today. After 5 minutes of trying to figure out how to use it (that was the hardest part) she has been using it for 30 minutes now! It really is an awesome tool!! To her, it’s a toy but she’s learning and practicing math and literacy skills. I’m happily surprised and very pleased with my purchase!!

This basic Learning Palette came with a few Math and Vocabulary/Language ‘palettes’ which lock into place. Then whomever is working on the activity, child/student has circles/answer-tiles that need to be placed, with the cooresponding  question. Each ‘palette’ can be turned over to check answers; so the activities are self-correcting. This made me think that it would be a great “Learning Center” to implement into any classroom.

All a teacher would need to do is to teach the class how to use the palettes and then place them wherever the teacher wants them to be: Learning Station, Take it to your seat center, etc.  (The palette itself isn’t heavy so it can also be taken back to a student’s desk as long as the pieces are pieces are all kept together…don’t want any of the colored circles to go missing!!)

This really is a great versatile tool- These “Learning Palettes” remind me a bit of the Versatiles that are made by Cuisenaire but everything everything is visually in front of the student, whereas with Versatiles, a student needs to refer to a worksheet or book and then to the Versatiles which can get a bit confusing (especially for the younger students.) Learning Palettes are available for grade levels too; there are reading comprehension palettes, math grade level palettes, phonics palettes… and as I learned Usborne is producing more as they are quickly becoming a very popular teaching tool!! (I am not surprised!!)

Check out these and other Learning Palettes here: http://bit.ly/e7LS9S

If you have used Versatiles in your classroom, you’ll see why these are a better substitute for the primary grades! I wouldn’t promote anything I haven’t purchased myself… so check them out and let me know what you think!!

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