This year I vowed to keep my art room organized! I see 400 students every week in grades K through 5. I also decorate all of the school's bulletin boards and showcases, put on three art exhibits during March (which is  Youth Art Month) and put on a huge Art Night in May. I am always so busy that it is easy to get frazzled. Here are some of my better ideas: 

1.The children must bring an over-sized T-shirt to art on the first day of school. On both the front and back I write their names in black Sharpie, big enough to read from across the room. The left sleeve has a number on it. The number tells them where their seat is, where they sit during "story time" and what their art room job will be all year. #19 sits in the same seat every week, and every #19 that comes to the art room is the "scissor monitor" in his or her class.  Substitute teachers always thank me for making their lives so easy, but I really did it for myself. You might want to ask parents to send in all of their old t-shirts when they clean out closets. Also check out Goodwill or other resale shops for cheap T-shirts, for those children who don't bring one. Neighborhood stores or banks may be happy to contribute if they can print their name or logo on the shirts.

2. Art supplies are always put away in the order of the spectrum (if they are colored) and in alphabetical order if they are labeled. For example, paints and construction paper sit in shelves in the following order:   red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Remember our old friend Roy G. Bip? Items like beads and such, sit in shelves with A first and ending in Z.

3. Over the years, I have saved the old white plastic Model Magic® containers. They are rectangular, so they sit very efficiently on shelves. Each container has a label on it, and all of them sit in alphabetical order.  The labels were all made the same font style and size and the paper they are printed on is all the same color. It really makes finding things a snap.

4. I made my "first day of school speech" in front of a video camera over the summer. I played it for every class and was astonished that, when it was over, the children all clapped. They sat enraptured and paid much better attention than they do to the"live" me. Every thing was scripted and I felt secure knowing that I hadn't "forgotten" to say something important to a class. Later in the term when one class was behaving badly and not cleaning up, I had them listen to that video again, and let them know that they would watch it again, if necessary, until they learned the art room expectations.

More to come and please send your own organization ideas!