Happy Sponges- Quick and Effective Clean-Ups

As you may have noticed by now, "Happy Sponges" is the title of this blog. I chose it for the title, because this idea is probably one of the quirkiest things I do in my teaching. I have a feeling my students will remember what a happy sponge is even long after they have been in my art room.

Anyway, Happy and Sad Sponges are something I came up with after repeatedly reminding to students that they need to wring out their sponges before wiping down the table. (They have a tendency to think the-wetter-the-better, and end up dripping all over the floor and creating a lake on the table top... which ends up wasting a ton of time and paper towels in order to dry it up!) This idea alleviates that problem!

 I have cut up sponges to smaller sizes so that I can have one for every child to use. When I am expecting class to be messy that day, I will take 3 minutes before the students come in to prepare the sponges. I dump all the sponges into the sink, rinse them out, and wring them out really well. These are "happy sponges" and they go in the plastic bin with the smiley face on it.

Whenever students need a sponge, my students know that they are to take one from the "happy" bin and that they are not allowed to add any water to it. If it gets too dirty or too dry to use anymore, students place it in the "sad" bin. (Eventually, sad sponges will need maintenance to made happy again.) 

*I really only use this with Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

**I admit that this is not a completely perfect system in that it does require a lot of maintenance on my part, but I find it very helpful.