My Father's World Kindergarten - Organization

I saw a great blog post recently about how someone organized their Kindergarten homeschool supplies and it was a huge help to me. I've finally finished organizing our school cupboard and thought I'd share the results.

I cleared out a cupboard in the hallway, moving some things to the basement and trying to creatively find new places for what was previously stored here. Lucy is excited that she can reach the drawing paper on her own now and I love having all of our school supplies stored in one place and ready to go for the fall.

On the top shelf I have plastic shoe boxes labeled (from left to right) - "play-doh", "play-doh toys", "pens pencils colored pencils", "stickers", "crayons markers", and "scissors glue paint". Each bin is labeled on both ends so that it can be put back with either end facing front. We have a good assortment in these bins including window markers, fat markers, skinny markers, crayon rocks, finger paint, watercolor paints and more! I love having a huge array of art supplies available for the girls to use and they always have fun when I pull out something they haven't used in awhile. Other art supplies like pom pons, brads, cardboard tubes, baby food jars - things like this for special projects are stored in a cupboard in the basement. On top of the play-doh bins are some extra plastic containers of homemade play doh. (For more play-doh ideas see my post here.) The small plastic boxes in front of the bins have crayons in them.

Second shelf - (from left to right again) I have a box labeled "My Father's World" that holds plastic bags of the ABC game, short vowel song, ABC chart, and bingo cards, alphabet flashcards, the number cup, and anything else we use daily. The box underneath is labeled "school supplies" and has pieces to our big calendar, HWOT music cd, HWOT chalk boards, MFW music cd, fundanas for our nature studies, and more. The Cuisinaire rods are stacked on top of these two boxes. Beside that is a roll of fingerpaint paper and a paint shirt. The three drawer set holds handwriting paper and the HWOT wooden pieces, a small pad of colored paper, and white paper. I was disappointed that my large pad of colored paper didn't fit in the drawers, so it is stacked on top of the drawers along with some watercolor paper and more drawing paper. These were all to wide to fit in the drawers. Beside the drawers I have my teacher's manuals, HWOT workbook, Cuisinaire rods workbook, and a dry erase board.

Bottom shelf - way at the back I have a large pad of fingerpaint paper that didn't fit anywhere else. The ant hill is stored here as well. I'm going to get a big binder with page protectors to hold all of Lucy's worksheets and projects throughout the year. (Art projects that are too big for the binder will go in a big plastic bin in the basement. Each girl has their own bin.) That binder will sit on this bottom shelf. Lastly, I have my file box with the alphabet puzzle on top of it.

My Father's World K goes through a series of themes: sun, moon, etc. I have a file for each week containing any ideas I come across, the student worksheets, and other things related to the theme (songs, fingerplays, etc). The calendar, hundred chart, and blend ladder are in the first weeks folder right now and will travel to whichever week we're working on at the time. After weeks 1-26 I have a file labeled "Music and Fingerplays" including the MFW music idea sheet and some fingerplay and song ideas. The "Nature Studies" file has some ideas copied from the back of the book "Pocketful of Pinecones" and other nature studies ideas I may come across. I have a file "Holidays and Seasonal Ideas" with holiday ideas that I want to use (a snowman poem, turkey coloring page, Christmas ideas, etc). "General Information" has a MFW catalog, speaking cds of David Hazell, a few parts of my student worksheets that I didn't need yet, etc. "Preschool MFW" contains the idea booklet and papers from the preschool kit and some other things I printed out that we used last year. My last file is labeled "HWOT" and includes the laminated cards that go with the wooden letter pieces.

I hope some of that is helpful to you! It actually took me quite a while to figure out how to best organize this and some of it may even change as we go. I always enjoy seeing how other people have organized various things and it sparks ideas of my own. Be happy I'm only showing you the one cupboard, you definitely wouldn't want to see the rest of my house in all its chaos. Maybe as the nesting instinct hits I'll become a bit more organized. Thanks for stopping by!