Are you ready for fall?!

If you're asking me... Um, no. I am not at all ready to trade in my sleepy weekday mornings on the couch for 6AM alarms and countless cups of coffee so I'm ready for my 3rd graders. As much as I love cider mills and autumn colors, fall is not this teacher's favorite time of year!

One thing I do love about fall, though, is the joy of fresh and new school supplies! I've spent the last week getting my Sunday School classrooms all set up and ready to go. As of three days ago, I have JUST enough teachers to get Sunday School off the ground (WOOHOO! Cue HUGE sigh of relief) and now it's time to outfit their rooms so the year can start off with a bang!

Like most churches, we have a craft closet that absolutely. does. not. end. You could get lost in that room and never actually find what you were looking for. We have bins and bins of dried out paint, broken pencils, dead markers, and for some reason, a BAZILLION sheets of foam. It is not my favorite place to go, but to it I went! I spent some serious time in there today organizing, labeling, and clearing all the Sunday School rooms out of random craft supplies (including a bag of rice...?) so we can start fresh!

Once each room was clutter-free, I had to do some replacing to do so these teachers are ready for anything! We are using a new curriculum this year: Holy Moly, from Sparkhouse Online. I am both excited and nervous for this change! It's very leaflet-based, which means lots of busywork for me and unfortunately, most likely some unused materials :( But, those leaflets are really the only supplies the teachers will need! It even comes with a SUPER handy checklist of supplies, showing what lessons need which extra supplies. SO helpful that I don't have to do that myself! 

Since most supplies are only used once or twice, I just made sure the craft closet is fully stocked with those. Some supplies (gluesticks, pencils, markers, crayons, scissors, tape) are used almost every week, so those need to be in the classroom every week.

To Meijers! Don't you LOVE back to school sales?! Woo hoo!

Almost $100 and half an hour later....

Supplies! Bins! Crayons! Markers! Labels! Excitement!

I put together three bins for each of our four rooms: an open bin with scissors, glue sticks, adult scissors, and pencils...

A bin of markers and a bin of crayons.

And each one is CLEARLY labeled so, fingers crossed, they will STAY ORGANIZED ALL  YEAR LONG!
Thing we can make it? I sure hope so...

Each classroom also got a battery-operated pencil sharpener so they can actually use the pencils.

Okay, fall... I am ALMOST ready for you!