Organizing and Storing Math Stations for a Quick Change Over

It’s time to change out math stations, and since I get so many questions about how I organize and store my station materials, I thought I would do a quick and dirty post of how I keep it all together for a quick change over.

As I begin to breakdown stations, I remove all my materials and rubber each tier of the activity so I can keep them separate and also so that when I pull them out next year, they are already organized and ready to go.

Once rubber banded, I make sure that I have the ‘I can’ or student instruction card placed on top of the activity

and then place all the items, including the activity cover in a ziploc. Can I just say, plastic bags are NOT my favorite and are NOT what I use to organize my stations when they are being used,  but for storage, they are the simpliest and cheapest things to date that I have found.

These things all go into a container along with the other math items for that theme.

They’re labeled and stored just like these Gingerbread  Stations.  By the way, if you need labels like these, you can click HERE to get some.  They’re free.

My containers were kept in my room all together and labeled like this last year.  This year, I still have the same containers and labels, but I only house my current theme’s containers at school.  All the other ones are kept in the storage unit at my house.  I like these containers, because with their handle, I can just grab and go.  They are also the PERFECT size.  If you’d like to get your hands on some this size you can find their description HERE.

 

How do you store and organize your station goodies for easy change over?  I’d love to hear from you.