Supplies

I have been having a difficult time with supplies over the past few years that I have been teaching. I have tables in my room and even though some people may love tables, me not so much. I love the fact that you save space with tables, but when the students don't have a place for their things, it becomes a problem, especially in 2nd grade. I have tried many things. My first year I tried a single bucket of supplies and by the end of the year it was a total mess. Then I switched to individual boxes. That got expensive for me, even when they were on sale. Then I had the students start to buy them. The only problem was that when a student ran out of a certain material, they wouldn't buy a new one and the other students were hesitant to share. This year I wanted to have a sense of community and that we take care of our things and share. I am going to try out the community supplies again. I will have the students buy their supplies at the beginning of the year, but as time goes on I will replenish them, that way all students are prepared and ready to learn.

I found these labels over a year ago on another teacher's blog and I fell in love with them. I wanted to make my own, but I happily stumbled upon them when I was reading Ladybug's Teacher Files blog. So I just want to say thank you for the amazing file. If you guys want it, you can get it here and the best part is that it's FREE!!

My Supply Project

I love these little labels. They make me think of a chalk board and chalk. At first, when I saw them I thought that's what it was. She has this whole thing called Flipped signs. It's where she has a black background with white lettering and it's supposed to make it stand out more. I actually bought her alphabet sets and I'm going to use the white ones and then "flip" the vowels. I did a little tweaking when it came to the original file. Usually each circle is 6 inches, but I went into Photoshop and shrunk them down to 2 inches. Then I took a few of my crafty punches and punched them out. So much easier than cutting 30 circles out!! It's nice to know that my crafting supplies are getting more than one use out of them!!
 
The really nice thing is that I already had these cups and all of the supplies at home. The only thing I have to figure out now is how to store them. I don't want to place them all on the tables, because I know that they will be knocked over by little hands. At first I was thinking of going to Hobby Lobby to buy some of those chargers (fancy plates) since they are normally $1-$2. But I would still have the problem of students knocking them down. That's when I decided to go with a clear box. I had one at home already so I set it all up and I think it looks really good. Hopefully now my students will be more willing to share. Now we just have to deal with keeping it clean! So after it's all said and done, I will only have to spend money on getting six clear boxes. It's a little mixture of my old way of storing materials, but with an organizational feature inside!!!
While I was on Ladybug's Teacher Files website I saw her post a project she has been working on and she uploaded it to a blog called 4th Grade Frolics. I was so excited to see that so many teachers post things they have been working on. I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I also have a crafting blog where I do the same thing. You have no idea how excited I was!!! So I am linking it up over at... Monday Made It.