Organizing Ava's Art and Learning Supplies

Like all things, Ava's learning and art supplies have become disorganized and spread out in too many places.  I'm still not 100% happy with how I have reorganized them but until I can get back out to IKEA this will have to do.  Eventually I also plan to also recreate this pinterest pin for her art supplies but I'm thinking for now I'd rather not have everything always within her reach. 

This was this mornings big project...

Ava has a cube organizer from Target that looks like this

It has been set up for a long while now and I've used target dollar section bins to further organize it a bit.  This morning I separated the toys to the left and the art/learning materials to the right.  The toys need another sort and dump/donate cycle but that's another task all together.  Below is what the right section now looks like.

The top shelf holds her puzzles and wooden blocks.  Easy learning activities that she can do independently to occupy herself or we can do them together.

The middle shelf hold her felt board, clip board, workbooks, flash cards, magnadoodles, coloring books, and the orange thing in the middle is a little learning game.  We have two magnadoodles and that really comes in handy when we "practice" our letters together.  She will watch me draw them on one and she will try on the other. 

  The bottom shelf holds the art supplies and other random things.

A closer look at the pink basket.

 In the back is drawing paper, construction paper, and poster paper.

 Then there are stickers, stencils, and foam letters.

 Clay, index cards, and an index card holder.

 One of my next projects is to make the index card holder into a sight word book.  I am going to take pictures of items around our house and environment to place on the left side and then the sight words on the right.

 Letters, numbers, and dress up people for the felt board.

 Magnetic letters and numbers

 Crayons

 Markers and Pencils

 A closer look

 On the very top of the cubes is a closed plastic container (an old ice cream container to be exact) with some other items I want handy but not something she can get without help.

 It holds the glitter glue, stamp pad, pencil sharpener, post its.

 Glues and scissors.  They are safety scissors but I'd still prefer to supervise what she cuts.

Paints and play dough are kept in the kitchen since that is where we use them.  Not to mention I'd rather her not have them in her room.


She recently completed two of her workbooks.  She does them at her own pace.  We try to do a little every day but how much is up to her.  One day she may want to spend hours doing her workbooks but the next she may be done after 20 minutes.  She did half of the let's draw and color book in one day.  She really enjoyed that one! 

We went yesterday and got two new workbooks.  It took her a while to narrow down which ones she wanted.  I limited her to two otherwise she probably would have asked for the whole shelf.

One last thing before I end this post.  I thought I would share the spot where we sit to do her books.  It's just a regular kids table in the kitchen but it has good natural lighting for most of the day.  Eventually I may move it to a spot where I can include a bulletin board but for now it works.

I need to post another learning activity so I'll scope out pinterest for something fun to try next week.  I already have our art project to share all picked out :)