Organizing Art Projects and Materials in the Classroom

This was definitely a work in progress for me over the course of...the moment I began teaching until the present. Organization and working with various materials in the most efficient way is the way I set myself up for success in the short time I have with each class. Here are the things that I think about:

• Classroom setup

• Like materials should be together. All of the paint types and tools are in the same area of my classroom. Brushes are separated by size and/or usage. The same colors are together, with newest arrivals in the back of the cabinet to use older supplies first. When you first take over your new classroom, don't be afraid to rearrange things! 
• An exception I make to this is with paper. Sometimes it's too easy to confuse one type for another, or there may not be enough room in one area for all of it. I keep drawing paper in one area, watercolor paper in another, construction paper in another, and free draw paper on its own to help eliminate confusion.
• Drawers, cabinets, and closets are labeled with their contents as far as it is feasible. This makes finding things faster for me, and easier to explain to a substitute or anyone else looking for supplies. 
• For classroom teachers, this system may look more like a tower of plastic drawers with labels for white paper, colored paper, different lidded bins for crayons, markers, and colored pencils. Watercolor trays with brushes and some water cups are easy to set up as well as store. Decide whether this will be open to student access, and if so, how organization will be maintained. Without maintenance, supplies will get ruined.

• Student setup



• For each incoming class, I have a seating chart ready to go with names and pictures from our school computer system. From the start, I set the expectation that students will sit in assigned seats, which helps to eliminate battles later on. It also helps me get to know their names more quickly and pass out supplies more easily.
• Each table has a color and each chair at the table has a number 1 through 4. In the past I tried sticking assigned jobs to various chairs, or numbers 1-25 to the chairs with sticky tack, but it would drive me crazy when numbers would fall, get ruined, lost, and sticky tack pocketed. The simplest solution was using washable crayon (comes off with magic eraser type products) to write the colored number on the back of the chair. No picking, no falling, less prep! Colors and numbers can be used for helping students move around the room ("Red table may line up," "All of the fours please come get your water buckets," etc.). I also have a clothespin chart at the door that has colors and numbers for when students need the bathroom, nurse, or the like to help me remember who left and where.
• Each student also gets a portfolio with their name and colored table dot on it. These are made out of oak tag and tape, and the size is just big enough to hold my largest paper in it. They keep these all year, choose their own artworks for the art show, and take everything home at the end of the year. This certainly beats passing things back all of the time, only to have it crunched into backpacks!
• The table colors run through the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple), which makes it really handy to order plastic caddies, trays, buckets, and the like in the same colors. These colored supplies "belong" to that table, which makes sorting things out faster and keeping students accountable more straightforward.

• Tools and Materials

• This has probably taken the longest and most finesse, and it is the area of organization that seems to matter the most when it comes to pulling of a successful lesson. How much to prep? How much choice versus structure? How to get 700 projects to fit in one room? A great deal of this is likely personal preference, but these are my personal preferences :)
• Use trays, caddies, buckets, cups, and tubs whenever you can. It keeps the right materials together, you make sure you have enough of what you need for all the students, and everything has a place to live while you're in the middle of your project. This works much better than a falling-apart cardboard crayon box with sideways broken crayons shoved in and half missing. Bonus, if it's easy to put away, it's more likely the kids will do it!
• Another word about trays - these were a game changer for me! They are perfect for very messy projects like super wet paint, clay, glitter, shaving cream, you name it! They are easy for students to carry from one spot to another without drips and easy to rinse under the sink. Classroom teachers, especially consider getting some trays for your projects - they contain the mess when you don't have a lot of transition time after a project. Budget-conscious teachers can use paper plates pretty effectively in the same way.
• Consider the ages of your students. I have found that the young ones LOVE to help with materials and will consider it an honor to be a "passer outter" or "clean captain." Try to rotate these jobs to spread the wealth. At the high school level, I found it more doable to make one table accountable for checking sinks and paint brush cups at the end of class to take care of any abandoned dirty brushes. They were sassy about it and would get on each other's cases to take care of their own tools. All grade levels will hoard colored pencils in their portfolios. Pull them out, move on with life.
• Allergies. Things like dairy, soy, nuts, and latex can pop up in all sorts of art supplies. There are entire websites out there dedicated to helping parents and teachers navigate craft supplies and allergies - print their pdfs! Some things of note: some finger paints and modeling dough contain gluten (which can wind up from hands into mouths) and adhesives on tape and stickers, as well as certain erasers, can contain latex. Many companies are helpful in this regard - call customer service and ask about potential allergens in their materials. Also be aware of the AP nontoxic label on materials. I sent some CL glazes away that had been lingering in my kiln room.
• Prep. It's easiest for me to prescribe the materials students will be working with for any given project. While the most recent wave of art education emphasizes choice-based art making for students, my kiddos are ages 5 to 8, and there are 700 of them. I give them creative choice in their content, but I need to keep track of my materials and sanity. I tend to bundle crayons, colored pencils, and markers together in caddies to make a choice of "dry materials" for coloring and drawing. I usually do crayon and watercolor together for resist effect projects, and I use more tempera for 3D surfaces. I use plastic egg cartons (checking for any egg allergies) as disposable palettes for the tempera that get tossed after a project is finished (I just don't want to spend so much time cleaning out reusable palettes anymore). There will be times when multiple grades will be using the same materials, and there are times when this is useful, and other times when my hands get crazy dry from being in water too much or I get winded from so much table wiping. I just recently thought, "Doing air dry clay with first and second grade at the same time will be so easy!" The next day I decided, "First grade will like no-fuss Model Magic just as much!"
• With anything, consider the longest amount of time something will take (fine motor skills, especially anything slightly unusual, will take longer than you might expect as kids do these activities less and less) and the shortest amount of time that you might need to extend into something else. Collaborative activities are great for early finishers, or even giving them a choice of 3 different reusable materials to work with (blocks, books, tablet photography). I personally try to rely less on free draw time because I see lots of students rush through lots of papers without much thought or effort. I DO love to see kids working with each other to build and photograph incredible off-the-cuff creations.