Spelling Storage Ideas

Before I get into spelling storage, I just want to shout from the rooftops that I WON something!!!  I never win anything!  I went to a tricky-tray once, and my friend won six things... SIX things.  And I left with nothing a gift certificate to the movies, but my friend won SIX things.  I'm not bitter at all... :)


Well tonight, during my usual nightly-blog-stalking, I stumbled upon Kristin's latest post at A Teeny Tiny Teacher and saw my name and almost passed out... I'm now the proud owner of a $10 gift certificate to Amazon!!  Well, I was the proud owner, because it took me all of five minutes to spend it, lol.

I was inspired to organize my printed photos after reading this post from IHeart Organizing {love this blog}.  So with Kristin's help, I put the Iris photo storage thingy into my cart and I'll be organizing pictures within the next few days!


Now onto the point of this post:  spelling storage ideas!  I don't know how you display spelling words in your classroom, but I have a little pocket chart on the board where mine are displayed all week:

{elf craft courtesy of First Grade Blue Skies}

I write the words on colorful and sturdy cards.  They are like sentence strips, but 1/4 the size each and they are made out of cardstock... I want to call them word strips.  I buy them at Lakeshore but I can't find them on the website right now.  

We use Treasures in my district, and if you use Treasures, you know that in 1st and 2nd there are 10-15 words a week, and there are six units that take five weeks each... multiply all that, and we are now dealing with 300-450 spelling word cards for the year.  To keep myself organized, I purchased some mini expanding organizers:

And I used the half circle labels provided to write the units and label the dividers {1 - 4 = Unit 1, Week 4} :

In each designated spot, I put the stack of 10-15 spelling words:

Now from year to year, I won't have to waste money on a million packages of word strips, or waste time rewriting the words on Monday mornings... because let's face it, I would do it on Monday morning.  I just pop open my expanding file, grab the week's words, and after the test at the end of the week, I put them back where I found them.

I hope this helps someone out there!  How do you organize your spelling words?

*Don't forget to enter my 200 follower giveaway!  It ends tonight at 12am {let's say Pacific time} and I will announce a random winner tomorrow after school!*