Taking the time to organize the art materials before the year starts will save you tons of time later and will communicate your respect for art to your students.

Art Center

Establishing an art center serves several important functions: it communicates that art is important, it's a visual reminder to the teacher and students to participate in art, and materials are accessible for students at all times.

Art centers can house art materials as well as instructional posters, historical artwork, art history timeline, bulletin board for students to share tips, art books, art time guidelines/rules, and a web site resource list.

If you have an art cart for holding all the materials, you can still park it in the art center.

Label all containers, shelves and cupboards clearly so that supplies can be found and returned easily.

Use electrical tape of different colors to label groups of supplies. For example, yellow tape for watercolor brushes, blue for multipurpose.

Find containers for mixing paint, holding water for paint, fand or distributing supplies to groups. Make sure they are the same type for each purpose so that you can easily stack them. Used food containers are perfect. Large yogurt for storing class sets, small yogurt for holding paint or water, frozen dinners for mixing paint.

Use a binder to store color overheads. Create a table of contents in the beginning so that you can easily find them.

Use clear tupperware-style containers so that you can easily see the contents. You can find Rubbermaid brand shoe box size containers at Target for a little over a dollar.

Create or buy wood blocks with holes drilled in them to store brushes, markers, pencils, etc. These take up a little more room but allow you to see at a glance if any supplies are missing.

Store brushes bristles up in order to preserve them.

Student work can be saved in giant folders made out of very large construction paper or tagboard placed in poster drawers or under furniture. You can also buy artist portfolios for as little as $10 or so.

Clean-up procedures should be figured out at the beginning of the year for each type of supply, posted and taught to the students. This will save you further time and will make your supplies last longer. If you have student jobs, consider assigning one person to the art area.

©2001 Jennifer MacLeod