Transforming an Art Cart to an Art Cupboard

We do a lot of art but we live in a small house - 4 people in 1,000 square feet.  Also, since I teach part time I have art supplies for 12-15 kids not just two.  My kids had an art cart for most of their supplies and all the other materials were stashed in 3 different spots.  Some of that was self designed as I didn't want a toddler to have unlimited access to paint.   Not only was it annoying to traipse around rounding up all the different supplies needed for painting, it wasn't kept as organized as I would have hoped for.  There were smaller organizing units inside the baskets, like a bin for crayons, one for colored pencils etc., but since all those were kept in bigger baskets when it came time to clean up everything just got tossed in the top of the basket.

Now the toddler is a preschooler and we were all tired of how it was laid out.  I got Mariah Bruehl's Playful Learning book as well, and her lovely pictures of pretty, inviting art spaces helped too.

So we got a cabinet from a local used furniture store, moved our bookshelf to our bedroom, and reorganized.  The toads were very excited about the process and helped quite a bit.  The former art cart has been converted to a science space which I'll do another post about.

The top basket in the original arrangement was for library books but older toad couldn't see in it so even that necessitated help on my part for him to read independently.  That got moved to their bedroom on top of a new small bookshelf because we got to get rid of the changing table (still need diapers at night but don't need the table for that YEAH).  Lastly, I did some purging of our bookshelf and that's much neater and organized.  So, self congratulatory pat on the back for all the organizing, and now I just have to make time for all the new ideas bouncing around from creating such nice work spaces!

I heartily recommend Playful Learning as well.  It's got wonderful sensory based learning activities for all the subjects.  Here is the author's website.