Organizing Student Supplies

Organizing school supplies and how to manage them is always the question that comes up at the beginning of the school year. Are you team caddy and community supplies or pencil box/bag and personal supplies?

Every teacher has their own own reasoning for this and there isn't one right or wrong answer. I myself have done both, even in the same school year. What is more important is teaching your students the proper care and use of the materials.

Community Supplies:
Usually placed in some sort of table caddy where all students have easy access. All students are equally responsible for the taking care of the supplies within the caddy. They must learn to share and cooperate. This doesn't come easy for all. A few years ago when the pencils at my tables were disappearing, I began assigning the tables a pencil color. I wrapped the end of the pencils with colored tape, a different color for each table. It soon became clear, which table had the problem with losing pencils. You can read more about it in this blog post Solve the Pencil Problem.

Personal Supplies:
When you give each child their own set of supplies you are working towards teaching a child to be responsible. Some will quickly destroy the crayon box, lose their crayons, pencil, scissor, and cap to their glue. It is what it is. So you need to have a back-up plan for those children. You will quickly see which child knows how to take care of things, which children don't and which ones just don't care.

I always have a lost and found box in my room for the supplies that are found on the floor, I can't stand when I child hands me a crayon or a glue cap randomly. I teach them early on to put it in the lost and found. This way a child who is missing something can just look for it in the Lost and found bin.

Pencil Boxes or Pouches:
Both work great- I've had some of my boxes for several years. At the end of the year, we clean them out using a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to get out all the yuck.

For the past few years I have started out with community, but then switched over to personal. I teach them to first be responsible and share, then give them their own as a right of passage- a privilege.

This year I'm going with Pencil Pouches as I want to utilize my double sided name tags. I found these pouches at the Dollar Tree, but you can also find them on Amazon. So much information is on these name tags, first and last name, color words, and shapes. I can also customize their sight word list so it is always there in front of them at all times,

**Side note- I will still have community available for those who end of losing everything later on. but it will be limited and they will have to share.