Table Organization

 

As many teachers begin to prepare for the upcoming school year, I thought I'd share some tips on organizing tables.

 

I absolutely *love* tables! When I switched classrooms, I had desks for one year and hated it. If you are a table person, here are some ideas for you!

 

 

I color code my table groups. Look carefully and you can see the colored TENT signs hanging above each "campsite," as we refer to our groups in our room.

 

The bins you see on the tables in the picture above (and the trays in the title picture) are from Oriental Trading. I also have a class set of scissors in the same colors. I found plastic cups in 4 of the colors (plus 2 clear) at WalMart. We keep pencils in the cup, glue sticks, scissors, erasers, name tags, etc. in the bin. I added the tray after the start of last year. It has worked wonders for keeping up with "work in progress!" Students put their work in the tray and can pull it out to finish when they have time, or when we work on it again.

 

I also can't imagine not having my chair bags! They are amazing and very reasonably priced. This will be my 6th year with them and they are holding up great. I think I had ONE that has gotten torn!

The kids keep their CAMP notebook, journal, and math book in the deep pocket, and their color crayons and markers in the little pockets.

Look them up at www.chairpads.com

 

To help keep clutter and mess to a minimum, every Friday for morning work the kids empty out and clean their chair bags and trays.