Art is My Jam

Answering some questions...

How do you decide what supplies to order?

1. I always go through my classroom and take a fast inventory and make a list of what I have. I recently got the great idea to create a "cheat" check sheet to make things easier, lol. I also make sure to write colors of any paints, glazes, pastels, etc... that I need extra of. You know the "blue" pastels always seem to disappear faster.

Art Room Supply/Medium Checklist - Supply List...check it out in my TPT Shoppe.

2. After I have my inventory, I then highlight and mark the consumables I always need every year. To figure out quantity, I just base it off the number or students in the grave/school and how often they will be used. For example: clay is always a hard one to estimate but Ive found that this works really well. One box (50 lbs.) of clay usually can do 2 classes of 28 students. Having extra clay is never a bad thing as you can do small projects at the end of the year or use it for art clubs, teacher's nights, fundraising projects, etc... 

NOTE: I always place 2 orders during the school year. A big order at the beginning and a smaller order around February/March. 

3. During the summer I curriculum plan by creating a basic curriculum map so I can order the supplies I need. Here's an example of how mine looks - it's very basic and yes, it'll probably change, but not enough to cause issues with my supply order. I NEVER create the exact same artwork every year, I get bored, LOL! So I'm always creating new things. 

How do you keep from going through tons of markers, colored pencils, etc...?

I will admit I'm OCD to the core and I have procedures in place for everything. I found that the more supplies you put out at once the more that will be wasted and they will go through.

 -  I use cups and buckets for all my crayons, markers and colored pencils. Each table gets 1 bucket of each. Each bucket/cup has 2-3 packs of each item in them. For example: 3 packs of colored pencils per bucket is perfect and they won't fight over the colors. Also when markers run out, they tell me and we swap them out - I take the bad one and give them a new good one. I keep the buckets full and never do they have to borrow from others to find the colors they need. With crayons, each bucket has 2-24 pack of crayons in them since there are more per pack. 

  -  I also use cups or small bins for oil and chalk pastels. If I can, each student gets their own cup of oil pastels to use. If I can't have a cup for each student, then I have 2 sitting by each other share one cup. For chalks, I have them in little bins and we dump them out on a towel and they share per table. It's perfect. I'll discuss why I use towels in another post. 

  - For other things...
      • Sharpies - I have one closable clear bin that I put black sharpies in and I fill it with 30 to start. As they dry up, I replace them. 

     • Colored Sharpies - I have one clear bin that I fill with a variety of colors and I just kind of guess how many I start with depending on the pack sizes. Usually these aren't used as much so I don't have a huge system in place for them.
     • Watercolors - every 2 students shares one tray of the cake ones. If it's liquids, I have re-sealable trays that the tables share so I can put whatever colors needed in each tray. 
     • Paint/Glaze - I love using re-sealable cups/trays so they don't go to waste. Depending on the project, I might have students rotate tables to use the color at that table. It gets them moving and helps with waste.