A Few Random Things

First, is anyone out there in blogging land from NY?  I would love to get together with other blogger from Western NY.

Secondly, I thought I would share how I organize some of my math materials.  My goal is always to give students access to all materials and have them do prep work.  I am not a fan of prepping things unless I have to.

I store all of my manipulatives in a shelf like the one in the middle in the picture below.  I REALLY disliked the primary color bins.  When I inherited the shelf from another teacher, they had seen better days and I just did not like how they looked.  I bought  Sterlite shoeboxes to store manipulatives in and made labels for the boxes.  It looks all matchy-matchy and very clean now.

Then I made a few systems for the students to get all of their own pieces to play center games.  Again, I bought a Sterlite drawer container – I swear I must keep this company in business! I store dice and game pieces in the top drawer.  The game pieces are in little container I bought at the dollar store and are actually little erasers.  You can buy containers of them – like 100 in a container.  They make great game pieces because students have enough markers to play any game.

 

I the bottom drawers, I store cups I rescued from a teacher who was throwing them away.  I put about 20 counters in each cup to be used as manipulatives.

   

This system allows students to get whatever they need when ever they need.  Saves boatloads of time!

Thirdly, I am getting ready for Valentine’s Day!  I wanted to send home a project for students to make their own containers.  I usually do them at school, but need all the time I can get for academics this year and wanted to have the students do another project with their families. Snag a copy of my letter and a graph by clicking on the image.

Have a great Monday!