I received a very good question from Linda in the comments section of one of my posts, so I thought I would reply to it in a separate post. Linda asked if I am planning to store all my PL activities together as a set when I remove them from the shelf, or will I disassemble them to reuse in other activities. Without question, I will do the latter. I store all the parts of the activities separately by type of material (i.e. trays together, baskets together, etc.) so I can easily reuse them in new activities.
I have mentioned before that I am very blessed in my classroom to have LOTS of great storage space. In fact, one whole floor to ceiling cabinet is completely devoted to Practical Life materials. It was set up this way when I arrived. I snapped some photos of the cabinet yesterday so I could show you.
This photo shows the bottom 3 shelves of the Practical Life storage cabinet. Directly across from the cabinets is a counter with drawers, a sink, and cabinets above, so I wasn't able to scooch back far enough to get a complete shot. As you can see, the trays are stored together in a clear plastic tub. On the same shelf, there are tubs for other types of trays and containers. The bottom shelf has a laundry basket filled with various baskets. Large trays are standing upright on the side. The top shelf of this photo has more containers, jars and baskets.
This shows the top two shelves of the same cabinet with more bowls, containers, baskets and trays.
This cabinet is above the counter with the sink and directly across from the floor to ceiling cabinet shown in the previous two photos. As you can see, it is used for glass items for the PL area.
There are two of these little storage drawer organizers on the counter with the sink. They are used for the little things that go into the transfer, dry pouring and spooning activities.
I was thinking about what I would do if I didn't have all the storage I have. I know that is the situation for many of you. I certainly did not have this much storage in the classroom in my previous Montessori school. We had a large unfinished basement in that school and there were some wooden shelves which housed some of the community PL items, but most of our materials were stored in open boxes on the floor. Anyway, I think I would consider investing in some of the storage containers with drawers on wheels like the one I used in my office (scroll down so you can see the photo in that post). You can get ones that have only 3 drawers so each drawer is deeper. I would use the largest one for baskets, and the others for trays, containers, and the little stuff stored in ziploc baggies. Another advantage to using this type of storage is that you can stack them if you remove the casters on the bottom. That way you can store quite a bit in a small amount of floor space. In my previous teaching assignment, we used two 3-drawer units stacked one on top of the other to store all the books we had printed and made from Reading a-z (which is a WONDERFUL resource; if you haven't heard about it you MUST check it out!).
Recent Comments