Week 3 - Let the Purging Begin!

Week 3 at the Clutter Free Classroom project meant purging. And though I didn't get much out I did get started! I knew I wanted to start with my two rolling carts, one that has my math items scattered all over the top. I'm hoping to eventually have all the math organized by concepts: measurement, geometry, patterns, number concepts, place value, etc.

My rolling carts are full of drawers which I somewhat organized when I started four years ago, and have tried to eliminate bits and pieces since. I have way too many linking cubes though! I have unifix cubes, snap cubes (at least that's wht I call them) which connect every which way and 'snap' together, and more snap kind of cubes that have a skinny nub that connects them. I'm very technical in my naming of manipulatives! I like using unifix cubes for math the best, but my kids love using the snap cubes for indoor recess. I had two drawers of them so I eliminated one. And during indoor recess this week (rain on top of snow turned the playground into glaze ice) I noticed that as usual no one way using the K'Nex. I don't think anyone has used them in four years. So I purged these:



I also got rid of two bingo games, addition and subtraction, that weren't great and I hated to use. One of our subs who is looking to get into a classroom picked those up in case she can use them in the future.

For now that is all I have done. Because during this week I was also prepping for Monday morning. I am in the last semester of my masters program and Monday is the beginning of a six week Action Research project. I've got a sub coming to teach while I gather data on my students' phonemic awareness and I needed everything ready to hit the ground running!

Hopefully I can carve out 5-10 minutes a day each week to keep purging. Head over to the Clutter Free Classroom for more inspiration. It's keeping me going.