The Elementary Entourage: Packin' Up! Tips from Enchanted Kinder Garden + HUGE GIVEAWAY

Hey guys! We only have 6.5 days of school left and I am SO excited for the summer. However, packing up isn't always the easiest. Over the years, I've learned a thing or two about packing.

Make a video
The smartest thing I've ever done is to take a video (you can't click that by the way) of my entire room before I pack up. This helps me to place everything together and pack correctly. It also helps me to plan over the summer when I can't remember the exact way my room looks.

I also look back at old photos and go ahead and rearrange the large furniture that I may not want moved out when they wax my floor. I just leave a sign and ask them not to move it. There is one piece that I know I will not rearrange the entire year and it's really big, so I don't move it. It saves the janitors time and energy.

I also take pictures of everything that I strongly dislike about my room. I took some unpinterest worthy and very unfiltered real world what my room looks like pictures. This reminds me what I want to change.

Decide what to change

I also make a listing of changes, what worked, what didn't work and so on. I also list out all the furniture that I have so when I get ready to unpack, I will have a way to account for every piece. I always miss something when I'm planning it out.

Write down what worked

I absolutely LOVED when my rug was this way, but my classroom was not this way this year. It's going to be one of my goals to make my room work with the rug this way.

I loved all of the things pictured above. This was my setup last year. I also had a very small class size which allowed me to do a lot more. This year with over 20 kids, it was a little bit harder. I loved our Daily Focus wall every day and our calendar being within reach of the kids. They did calendar everyday and were in charge of this.

My favorite thing ever is having these! I have about 20 crates in my room. Some are in the restroom and only for storing things. The rest are either around the room or around my guiding reading table. Every year, I put all of the crates on my large rug, take the tops off and organize. I leave them on the rug as I am packing. This makes it SUPER easy to put things back that ended up out of place during the school year. I also do my reading and math center buckets the same way. Here's what those look like.

They have been sorted by skill and by month. Next week, I'm going to only put monthly things in the correct crates and sort my centers by skill. The green ones are for literacy and the pink (I have a whole wall of these) are for math.

If you need some help sorting out things you want changed for next year, here's some sheets to help you!