Our Writing Centers

On any given day in our house you will find all types of paper! My two girls are always wanting to draw, cut, color, make crafts, etc.( I can't imagine where they get it from!) So I stumbled upon a Pinterest idea from the Stay at Home Educator blog describing  a writing center for each child. The idea is to organize materials for each child that they can have access to at any time. I placed our writing centers in our "art area" in our house. We spent a lot of time discussing how to keep the center organized and how to clean up when finished. Today was our first day of "writing" and it was a hit! Here are a few shots of how I organized our centers. 

 I created notebooks for each girl with plastic sleeves to store their artwork in after finishing or waiting to finish. I also placed mailboxes on top of each center for Joey and I to write notes to the girls and for them to write notes to each other.

 These are our top drawers for supplies. We went into a lot of detail about caring for these items. (i.e. keeping crayons and markers in their boxes, tops on markers, etc.)

 In the second drawer I placed fun stickers, notepads, post its, paper etc. I placed some of the same things in both drawers and some different based on the interests of each girls or based on the materials available.

 I am going to use the third drawer for bigger paper or notepads.

Here is a glimpse of where these centers are in our "art area". Today I moved the drawers to the floor and the girls worked fine. However, our home is very old which means the floors are very cold. The girls did not seem to mind, but I would like to come up with another solution for a work space. 

Lillian spent at least 30 minutes "writing" today. She loved feeling up her plastic sleeves with her work and they are all in one place. 

In our art area I also organized everything into drawers. This has been a big help having all these supplies in one place that is easily accessible.

Another way that has helped to organize our crafts and art work is our clothesline of work. I usually display things for about two weeks and switch it our with our new work. The girls really like seeing their work displayed for others to see!