The Best Things In Life Are...ORGANIZED!

Teaching is a constant struggle to be organized. You have a million things to do...Where do you begin? (And that's if we remember what was on our list in the first place!) I have tried many, many different types of organizational methods and many have failed...horribly failed. Others kind of worked, but needed tweaking and some were clear winners. Over the next few weeks I will be sharing my organizational strategies for different items/aspects of the classroom. Hope you guys enjoy!

I wanted to quickly share my CRAYON SAGA with you. The cardboard boxes the crayons come in were a clear fail. The carboard just couldn't hold up to the use and abuse of little fingers. Then I had two different ideas to try next. I decided to do one with the crayons and one with markers and see which worked best. (These are the Large Crayola Crayons and Large Washable Crayola Markers that I am talking about). Each seat had a ziploc baggie filled with items the kids may need, crayons in one bag, and another bag with a glue stick, highlighter, scissor, eraser etc. The ziploc bag was a fail because the little guys couldn't pinch seal the bags. I traded the bags out with Slider close bags and all was well again in my universe. The problem with the bags became the students putting the crayons back. They also work close to each other so sometimes crayons would get mixed up between multiple students. I am also convinced there is an invisible monster who lives under the computer desks that lives off of crayons and other school supplies.(Seriously, where do they go?! You hear it hit the floor and its GONE) I also found that the crayons were breaking. This may just be the kids pressing hard but they were stored at their seat. (See my post about Seat Storage coming soon!). I then directed my attention to my markers. They were still all usable, and I had only lost maybe one or two markers to the dreaded monster. I hate to waste class time and the kids digging through a bucket of mixed markers or crayons was just not a good enough reasons to waste time, so I sorted the markers by color in two bins. I told my students I expect them to look this way at the end of class. I did not have high hopes the first time we used them but I was pleasantly surprised when class was over and they were still all sorted, capped and accounted for. Could this be the soultion I was looking for? The downfall to the trays was that they were open and took up a decent amount of (very precious) space. The tray was also challengeing when most of the markers were in use and it was hard for them to have the space awareness to put them back. I cleaned out my classroom at the end of the school year, placing all my crayons in one large ziploc bag and vowed I'd avenge them next year. With all this to think about I devised another crayon storage/sorting strategy. I also vowed to not be known as the OCD teacher either but that's another issue :) This time I was sure, I had figured it out!

I headed to my local Dollar Tree for supplies. I purchased 4 Packages of 3 containers. I made labels for the lids with the name of the colors. I only have a black and white printer so I printed the labels and then hand colored the words in with sharpies. ( I would later purchase another set of containers) The labels were for the contents of each box. The Colors: Pink, White, Orange, Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, Brown, Black and The items Small Erasers and Large Erasers.

I Would later add Gray, Peach and Highlighters.

I taped the label to the inside of the lids. I then cut construction paper rectangles to fit the bottom of the containers. For White I used plain computer paper. I measured and cut until it fit well, then used it as a template to cut the others. I attached them to the bottom of the containers with rolled pieces of tape.

I got my giant bag of mixed crayons, opened all the lids, and started to sort.

I tossed out the crayons that were not in good shape and realized I was low on a few colors. I was able to order new crayons from Amazon. They sell single color large crayons by the dozen for about $6.00 each. As you can see with the paper on the bottom, it's easy to visually see where each crayon should go. The box is plastic so it's sturdy and it has a lid so they won't be knocked over or rolling around the place.

The containers were so spacious I decided to add my thin crayons to them too. Colors that were inbetween (Red-Oranges etc) I kept out. Even with the thin crayons added you could easily fit 40 crayons in that container. More than enough. ( I like to have at least a dozen of each on hand... What do you want... the kids to SHARE?! ...Crazy!)

Amazon also sells Pink and Peach as well in seperate dozen packs. I needed to order some more highlighters and erasers to finish my containers. Crayons, though are typically for my younger crowd. I have a different storage method for my older kids who are working with interactive notebooks and need bottled glue, scissors, erasers, pencils, highlighters etc every class. For them I went old school and purchased zipper pencil cases at the Dollar store and made a dozen sets. Students can always share glue if the number of students out weighs the number of pouches. I toss in two-three pencils regardless (I hate the dreaded pencil sharpener screeching in the middle of a lesson!) and for larger classes, I have a few extra scissors on hands. It also makes it easy for me to transport, or pass out supplies. And they stay in pretty good condition because only my 2nd to 5th graders use them.

How you orgainze your supplies is up to you. Remember you could lay them down on the table and let the kids have at it, and they would think it was FANTASTIC. Make sure however you store them you keep them clean and together. I buy my own supplies and I know many other teachers do too. Make sure when you set up your procedures you show your students that you care how they handle and put these supplies away as well as your EXACT expectations. I have no plan to be purchasing any more crayons this year. What we have is what we have. Simple as that. We all use them, we all must take care of them.

Last note I would like to leave is that yes, I teach computers...YES, I still use crayons...EVERY class. Our younger guys do letter of the week activies, computer word of the week, keyboard color coding activites, general computer puzzles and worksheets from time to time. Sometimes you need to change things up ;)

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Elementary Techie

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