Happy Sunday! This weekend, some of my blogging friends and I are sharing our favorite ways to stay organized in our classrooms.
I don't have to say this, but being organized it crucial to a successful classroom. There are many things I can do by the seat of my pants, but not being able to find things drives me insane. Over the years, I have learned many tips and tricks to staying organized. It makes my life as a teacher much easier. :)
In this specific post, I am going to focus on how I help keep my students organized. Let's face it, five year olds typically don't have an organized bone in their sweet little bodies. At least my own five year old doesn't. Teaching them organizational skills early in their little lives makes everything so much easier.
I have used tables in my kindergarten classroom for six years. If you told me tomorrow that I had to use desks, I might go nuts on you. In my opinion, tables are the way to go. However, they don't lend themselves to organization very well. In my early years of using tables, things were EVERYWHERE. I had no place for my students to put their folders, work, books, or anything. It was a hot mess.
Enter my favorite classroom product: The Seat Sack.
A teacher friend of mine had purchased these for her own kindergarten kids, and as soon as I saw them, I knew they were an answer to my prayers. I begged The Hubby to buy them for me for my birthday (only a teacher would understand). To this day, I have to say they were the best birthday present ever.
The first year of having Seat Sacks, I bought the beautiful blue for all of my students. They worked like a charm. Even my most unorganized kids could stay somewhat organized with the Seat Sack on the back of their chair. It was WON.DER.FUL. Before leaving for summer break, one of my teaching partners was looking through the Seat Sack website, and noticed that these little gems come in a variety of colors. Her genius mind made the connection in these colors and the fact that we assign a color to each table (i.e. "Orange Friends").
Being the charming teachers we are, we begged our principal to purchase the variety of colors for each of our classrooms. He agreed, and voila... One of my favorite organizational tips came to life.
Seat Sack has more than just those colorful, handy, heavy-duty sacks that go on the back of chairs, though.
This year, I have stopped doing homework with my students. Instead, I send home a book bag filled with the student reader for the week, sight word cards, a tic-tac-toe activity board, a highlighter, a handwriting book, addition and subtraction fact rings, and a pencil. I discovered Seat Sack has a product that is perfect for my students' take-home bags. This has helped so much with student organization this year. Instead of having papers here, there, and everywhere, all of their homework can go neatly inside of their take-home bag.
In the next few weeks, I will be blogging more about classroom organization using Seat Sacks. Stop back by for a GIVEAWAY, too! :)
But right now, all of us who are part of this amazing hop want you to enter for your chance to win a $50 TPT gift certificate!
Onto the next blog, friends! Check out what Hilary at Second Grade Is Out of This World has to say about organization!
No comments:
Post a Comment