Organizing

My first classroom was a portable building (trailer). It had a side-by-side built-in wooden bookcase in the back corner, I had a big metal cabinet, and a small coat-sized closet....storage was minimal. I asked around and raided  the give-away piles to try to create storage space for all the stuff you need and use during the school year. As a first year teacher it was a struggle---What do I need? How/where do I get it? How should I set up my desks/centers/storage? Endless questions and only a short amount of time to get to it before students come and your year begins.

I would love to tell you I conquered the clutter and was an organization wizard but that was NOT the case. I survived my first year and learned many lessons. I started to figure out what worked for me in my classroom and more of how I like to do things. 

As a teacher, I hope to never stop learning! I am on my 4th classroom in my teaching career (public and private) and still am learning!

While on this journey to organize my classrooms, I have been adding to my "stash" of learning activities and centers. One of my new years resolutions for 2020 is to really organize my learning centers. 

One of my favorite organizational tools are my rainbow drawer carts.

I have two of these in my preschool classroom. I LOVE THEM!!!! They have wheels to move them easily around the room if needed and each one comes with 10 drawers.

I use the first 3 drawers to hold our crayon containers and the 4th to hold the containers of pencils, scissors, and glue sticks.  For me, community supplies make life easier especially for smaller learners. 

The remaining 16 drawers I use for centers. Some hold morning center type centers like our legos, tangrams, geoboards, stencils, and other STEM type toys. Other drawers have the current learning games we use during our rotation learning stations/centers. I can easily pull out a drawer and put it anywhere in our room and POOF, you have a center. I like to have 2 -3 kids working in a center at time for noise control and just for overall space.

BUT what about all those learning games we are not currently playing with?

I decided to use those plastic shoe boxes to organize them.

I love these because they are sturdy and with the lid you don't have to worry about losing pieces when transporting them. I do have cubby space under my cabinets but not the kind of space that these need...so right now my solution is to store them at home until I need them. Not ideal, but seems to be working for now.

I also like that I can easily label each box and since they are clear I can see the materials inside.

30 boxes made so far---and that's just the ones not currently being used at school!!

Ya'll, I may have a bit of a problem----but I will just be positive and say creating fun learning games is a good problem to have :D! 

I'll share what's in each game in another post!