Room set up

When I worked in the schools as a speech-language pathologist, I got moved around to different schools almost yearly.  While getting to know new students and staff was a little intimidating to introverted little old me, I always got more than a little excited about organizing and preparing a new therapy space and I kind of miss it.

Our space hasn't really changed in the last few months, although I have streamlined some things that have made it easier.  However, we are going to be building a new house with a dedicated school space (hallelujah!) and I am busily poring over Pinterest and sketching out ideas for when we finally get to move in.  In the meantime, I thought I'd show you our current space and go over a few of the things I've done to help organize our materials.

When I first started with Mother Goose Time, I bought fancy bankers boxes and hanging files to store each day's curriculum pack.  These didn't work perfectly, though, since the lids wouldn't fit flush over the hanging files which made it difficult to stack them.  I finally realized that the adorable school bus box that the the curriculum ships in is actually the perfect place to store them.  I do take them out of their shrink wrapped bags and put them in tabbed manila folders, which fit perfectly in the boxes.  Large, bulky supplies are labeled with the day of use and placed in a large freezer bag and kept in front of the folders.  I also put the contents of the teacher material bag in freezer bags.  Manipulatives are kept in the box for the month and then transferred to our toy shelf for use in other activities.

I've shown you the recycled containers I use to store our manipulatives before.  I love these tall, clearcontainers that were full of mixed nuts from Costco at one point.  However, we don't go through mixed nuts very quickly so I have a very limited number of these.  I had been using Costco size cottage cheese containers since Littlest could eat it for every meal and we go through one every 10 days but they were hard for the girls to open on their own and they'd have to go through lots of them to figure out what was in each one.  My mom was cleaning out her supplies and gave me a stack of these clear Betty Crocker containers.  They are perfect for our smaller items, like foam shapes and the counting manipulatives.  The girls can see what they want and they are easier to open without my help.

We do Circle Time in the corner of the living room.  I put together a portable Circle Time display last fall using a science fair board.  It works pretty well and I store it in our catchall-understairs storage area when we aren't using it, along with a few boxes of curriculum (we have a storage unit nearby where older boxes get moved so we don't fill up this space entirely).  I also have an Algot rolling shelf from IKEA in there that I use for storing art supplies and my Scotch laminator.  This area is not photo-ready at the moment but you can imagine.  I use cottage cheese containers to store my glue, scissors, crayons, stickers and other large supplies.  Little things like extra googly eyes, glitter and sparkly things are placed in glass baby food containers and then kept in diaper wipes containers to keep things semi-organized.

I've commandeered the back wall of the living room for our preschool alphabet, song and shape displays.  I've had to move everything up kind of high lately because Littlest has become obsessed with taking the things down and peeling off the sticky tack.

I love the I Can Read books that come every month.  I keep them all in a big bowl, easily accessible on the lower shelf of one of our side tables so Miss M and Littlest can pull one out and either read it on their own or bring it to me.  Miss M's reading skills have really blossomed lately and she feels so proud of herself when she's able to read a book all by herself.

That's our space for now.  I imagine a more typical preschool set up with stations in our new space, along with a large, dedicated store room for curriculum and materials when we move into our new home.  It's still several months away but a girl can dream...