Classroom organization

I am participating in ABC and 123's organization party! Here is a picture of how I organize my markers and colored pencils for the art center:

As you can see, I have them sorted by color. This makes it easy for the children to find the color they are looking for. It's also great for rainbow writing (writing a word, letters, names, etc. with the colors of the rainbow). I just used milk cartons, cut off the top, and put 6 of them in a basket to sort the colored pencils. The markers are stored in a container that is usually used for silverware in the dishwasher. It has 6 compartments.

This photo shows how I have my letter stamps organized. I got this idea at a kindergarten conference I attended a few years ago:


The letter stamps are sorted and stored in tool caddy. I labeled each of the drawers with the letter that's inside. I had about 3 sets of letter stamps, so there are a few stamps in each drawer. For example, there are 3 upper and lowercase A's, in different "fonts" or letter styles in the "Aa" drawer. This makes it so easy for children to stamp names, words they know, etc. It is very easy to maintain because the children can help sort them if they get mixed up. Here is another photo:



Thanks for looking and enjoy the organization party!

A few classroom photos

Hello! I've been working in my classroom and took a few pictures.
Here is the world map and landmark cards I posted about here.





This is my reading area. The small baskets on the top of the shelf are sorted by character. The others are sorted by subject/theme: animal books, abc books, etc. I also have other book baskets around the room with math/counting books, social studies/science books, religion, etc. The yellow tub to the right of the shelf holds the big books.




Thanks for looking and have a good day!

I Spy Bags

Hello! I made a couple of I-spy bags for my classroom. There are several good tutorials on making these, like this one...and another one here. I actually made mine, then thought of searching for a tutorial! I really like the way they turned out.


Here is a photo of it empty; I used felt to eliminate having to deal with the rough edges of fabric.
The tutorials online use cute fabric, but later (after I made mine!) I saw really cute printed felt at Hobby Lobby that would be great for these.

Then I added rice and some plastic objects. I am going to use this bag for beginning sound recognition. I printed a sheet with the letters that begin each object. The children have to cross off the letter as they find an object that begins with that sound. I had these red toys in my closet at school for some time...I think they were from an older activity, but I'm not sure where they came from originally.


I also filled one with magnetic letters. This will be used for letter recognition or can be adapted to beginning sound identification, (give the child pictures, have him/her find the beginning letter), finding the letters in one's name, try to find the letters in ABC order....etc. This would also be a great activity to put in a literacy bag with an I Spy book...so many possibilities!



Hope you enjoyed seeing these. I am off to work in my classroom. Three weeks from today is our first day of school!