In my kinder classroom, I celebrate many holidays and special occasions during the seasons. For those celebrations, I use certain materials that I only need during that special event. For the first couple years I taught, I just threw things in random places and then forgot where they were when I needed them the next year. Then, I would have to re-buy them (eye roll)… until I got organized. I found a very simple way to organize my seasonal materials so I could easily find everything I needed for each event in my classroom.
I use two main ways to organize seasonal materials: 1) storage bins and 2) files.
There’s many different ways to organize your classroom and materials but what I found works best (for me at least) is keeping all my bigger materials in a storage bin and the seasonal activities that are paper in files.
Storage Bins
I have 4 large storage bins that live above my cabinets. My room used to be a library so I’m not blessed with built-in storage. Each bin is labeled for fall, winter, spring and summer. Every celebration or event we have in my class, I look in the bin of what season the event falls in. For example, coming up we’ll celebrate our 100th day of school. When it gets closer, I’ll search through the winter box for all the materials needed for our 100th day centers.
Seasonal Files
In my file cabinet, I’ve started a file for every single holiday or special event that we celebrate in my class! This makes it really easy to find any lesson plans, activities or crafts when the celebration gets closer. These files are nothing special, just a place to store things that I want to redo with each class.
These two super simple ways of organizing have saved my time, sanity and money! What ways do you store your materials and activities? Comment below!
