School Organization

Before school even got out this summer, I made a few to-do lists.  One of my to-do lists was my "Summer Projects for School" list.  I had over 20 different items on my list.  Some of them small little items like making a 1st day of school picture frame.  Others were big projects like cleaning & organizing my two closets.  I have a small closet in my classroom that I cleaned out and organized in June.  I also have a large "closet" that I usually call our coat closet.  It is basically a hallway with shelves on one side and then coat hooks on the other with some shelves above the hooks.  I decided to tackle this project today.

Here are the before pictures:

This is the wall of shelves.  I know it doesn't look terrible, but I wanted to change some things up and throw away some things I don't need/want anymore.

This is the other side of the closet.  It has two shelves with hooks for the students' coats & bookbags underneath.  A lot of this stuff I had to just put on here for the summer to get it out of my room while the custodians did their thing.

Here is the after picture.  I organized my books and then moved them so they are all in the same section of the shelves.  The first open shelf is for my recess tubs, but my kids were playing with them when I took the picture.  I still need to get four more blue bins for supplies for the second empty shelf you see.

Recess Tubs

Supply Bins

Here is the side with the coat hooks.  I plan on leaving the bottom shelf open so that students can put their lunch boxes or hats & mittens on the shelf.  The big white box at the end is paper for our copy machine.  My closet leads to the lounge where our copy machine is located so I get overflow of paper in my closet.

 Here is a close up look at my classroom library.  I keep my books in this closet and then pull out the bins as needed.  This way my students aren't overwhelmed with books at the beginning of the year.

At the end of my closet, I have these bins that I use to keep my center supplies in.  

I feel so much better now having the biggest thing on my to-do list crossed off.  I am so happy that I am organized for the beginning of the year.  I wanted to make sure things are easy to find for my student teacher as well as myself.  :)

Check back next week for some pictures of my classroom.  I am meeting my student teacher on Monday in my room so we can hopefully get most of the room put together.