Logical-Mathematical Intelligence:  Logic Smart, Thinking Smart, Number Smart Students use the letters to make their spelling words.  I found this in a dollar store. This center was devised by my MD school system and involves multiple meaning words and is similar to the Riddle Me This center you'll read about in the following pages.  This center was devised by my school district in Maryland, as well.  Random items (magnet, clothespin, tiny pencil, jack from a jacks game, toy truck, etc.) are placed in a bag.  Students choose a task card that requires them to use critical thinking skills as they examine and write about the objects.  Cards range from tasks that ask them to sort the objects according to pre-determined and self-selected categories, to speculative tasks about how a future civilization would view us if they found only this bag of objects as remains from our culture.  Very imaginative and gifted students often choose this center repeatedly when they go to Thinking Smart.

Naturalist Intelligence Discovery Smart, Nature Smart This center includes National Geographic magazines, Time for Kids, Scholastic News, and science-related books for kids on a rotational basis.  Students read stories and then record an interesting ("weird") fact they read in the blue book.  The book is simply photocopies of a page that asks children to record their names, the date, the title of the publication they read, the title of the article, the author, and what the weird fact was.  I bound the pages together using a book binding machine my school has, but you could use a three ring binder (it would probably be more durable, too).  Students enjoy reading what previous classes and classmates read about. The Reading to Learn center focuses on reading to be informed tasks.  It's a part of Nature smart, so students read papers or books in the center about different animals.  They then create a four square graphic organizer showing what they learned.