School Organizing - Workboxes and Cards

As we head into the 2014-2015 school year, I have to admit, I'm more than a little apprehensive.  I will be a first year teacher with two preps at a time (HOORAY for getting paid to work instead of paying grad school tuition rates!!!!).  I am not quite sure how I'll balance that work load, cleaning, cooking, as well as planning and executing Xander's school.  Not to mention I'd love some time to have fun and maybe even have a personal life.

To help keep us both on track, I've decided we're going to try a combination of a workbox system and task cards.

First I printed up a bunch of cards with the various subjects I want to include this year (I haven't shared these just because the images are straight from Google).  The categories I included are listed below since some aren't pictured.

Design Challenge

Writing/Motor

Math

Literacy

Puzzle

Art

Game

Science

Spelling

Spanish

Visual Spatial

I did a little rearranging and this is what the new work area looks like.  The shelves are part of the TROFAST system from IKEA.  Above the shelves is a marker board I got inexpensively from Target to hold our All About Spelling materials.  Xander is currently using these magnetic letters instead of the little letter tiles that came with the program, but I'm sure we'll eventually switch back.

 I stuck most of the category cards on the bins using Blu-Tack.  The rest of the cards are in the little green basket on the shelves.  Those are things like a game or spelling that don't really fit into the bins. The idea is that he'll do "X" number of cards a day, depending on how many activities I have planned for the week.  He can pick the cards and the order, and then when we complete an activity, we move the card into the little blue basket. Math and Spelling both have two cards in hopes that we'll do them each twice a week.  My hope is about half an hour of "work" about five days a week.  If we don't get to all of the cards, the world won't end, it is just our goal.  Having the cards also makes it easier for me to set up.  I can visually see what types of activities I have and what ones I still need to gather together.

We did a trial run and it seemed to work pretty well.  I hope that it will continue to work for us as our schedules get tighter and we get into a routine.

I'd love to hear how you organize you preschool/kindergarten things to make your weeks run smoother!