If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably already seen these!

We have tables in my classroom and use community supplies. Each table gets a supply caddy with colors (markers, colored pencils, and crayons), scissors, glue, and highlighters. I love community supplies because it gets kids learning to share with one another and be patient. This was my first year that my little darlings… well…. always had trouble with the “patience and sharing” concept. If a different kid at their table was using the red marker, they would run up to me and explain to me that their table needed another red marker. We had plenty of class meetings about what it looked like to share, and what it looked like to be patience while their color was being used.

Another way that my kids had trouble with supplies this year is they constantly lost everything! I’m not sure what happened, perhaps they have a new fondness for eating supplies. Yet it was almost daily that one of my students would come up to report that they lost a certain color marker, colored pencil, or crayon.

To ease the pain that I felt this year of supplies being lost (were they eaten? Stolen? Thrown out the window? I shall truly never know), I opted to create drawers that are color-coded. Students will be free to come up and pick up a different color if their table is suddenly missing one. We will create class rules and expectations on this, however. Such as using it as a last resort, or returning a color if you have one too many.

I have two tall, white Sterilite storage towers in my room. I used to fill these with my classroom teacher supplies (staples, adult scissors, binder clips, White-Out, etc.). I decided to make these something that my students are allowed to have access to as well. With the addition of these handy dandy file drawers that a retiring teacher gave me, I now have an incredible amount of storage space in my room. These drawers are perfect for the color-coded colors! Now all I need is a cute name to give this area…. “Color Drawers?” I’ll need to brainstorm this!