Teaching supplies

I have an inkling that teaching supplies do not spark a wide-eyed wonder in most of the readers of this blog.  I also have a feeling that most people would wonder why I "wasted" my time, staying up until 1:00 am on Friday night and working another three hours on Saturday morning to reorganize the aforementioned supplies.

Well, teaching supplies do spark wide-eyed wonder in me -- always have.  And over the years that my supplies have been in my garage, they have gone through times where they have become very hard to reach -- through the layer of lawn mowers, ladders, strollers, spare chairs, and so forth.  The whole reason I have these supplies (and have added to them from garage sale finds over the years) is to use with my children and with children whom I teach.  Having all these goodies available while teaching Adrianna and her friends preschool over the last two years has been invaluable.  

But it reached the point with my supplies where that layer in front of them was so thick, that Adrianna and I kept going to the library to pick up books that I knew I had.  That is the ultimate frustration to me.  Why would I bother to keep my supplies if I cannot even use them when I want to??  A few weeks ago, Adrianna asked me to pull out my copy of Hotel for Dogs, after she listened to the CDs of it from the library.  I went to find it and came up empty.  I knew it was in there somewhere... but where??  That was the final straw for me.  

Thursday night, I formulated a plan in my head as I fell asleep, and Friday, I set forth to attack my supplies.  Previously, I had all my Social Studies curriculum and idea books lumped together with the Social Studies picture books in three boxes spread throughout the garage.  (I know, some readers are starting to yawn.)  What I decided was that I wanted all of the teacher books for each subject in separate boxes and all the picture books for each subject in easy pull-out boxes that I could take into Adrianna's room one at a time. 

I could imagine the whole thing... I would take Adrianna into the garage, and say, "Which subject do you want to read about this week?  Science?  History?  Famous people?" and all of my treasured books would be used and enjoyed and best of all, my child would be learning wonderful things.

And so, that is what I did.

It may not look like much.  In fact, even my husband didn't understand why I was doing anything.  "They looked organized before," he said.

But I now have the reality of the vision, and I think I got Adrianna to catch a glimpse of it.  She even pointed excitedly and asked, "What's in that box?  Can I have that one in my room this week??"