Ahhh summer. A great time to rest, rejuvenate, and reflect. It’s also the perfect time to get ahead on some areas that will save you plenty of stress next school year.

Over the course of the past year, I have been creating Math Activity Packs to bundle together all of my resources by domain. The reason I bundle these together is so teachers can have a one-click shopping experience to get all of the resources they need to cover an entire math unit. So, if you’re getting ready to teach place value, you can have a craft, some worksheets, hands-on centers, and some whole group teaching materials all in one bundle. I love these bundles, and all of the time they save in lesson planning!

Now that it’s summer, you can take a look at your math curriculum, map out all of the domains that you will be teaching and start shopping for resources now!

I wanted to share a few of times-saving tips today to help you prep a years worth of math activities all at the same time!

Tip One: Create a storage system that makes sense.

Maybe it’s a drawer in your filing cabinet, with folders labeled by unit, or plastic bins in a cabinet. Whatever is easiest for you, set up a storage system in your classroom where you can have your resources by each math unit separated, and easy to grab and go!

Tip Two: Set aside a day to print everything.

Make sure you have enough ink and paper on hand, and just sit down and print everything at one time. The most efficient way to do this is to take a file that you purchased, skip past any cover or credit pages, and print all of the pages with actual teaching materials on them at one time. Then simple paper clip the master packet together and store.

If you take a few hours of one day of your summer break, you can have all of the centers, small group games, crafts, etc. printed and ready to go!

Tip Three: Store the newly printed, master copies in your storage system.

So now you have dozens of activities printed. It’s time to file them away in the system that you designated to store your math resources. Put them away nicely and neatly, and don’t worry about cutting or making copies right now. Just know that when it’s time to teach geometry you’re going to pull out that folder, bin, or box, and be ready to plan away.

Tip Four: Prep the resources in full when it’s almost time for that unit. (Volunteers are handy for this part!)

You can copy and cut what you need to in the days leading up beginning that unit. You’re still working ahead this way, because you’re not working week-to-week…you have an entire unit done in one planning session. I highly recommend making it even easier on yourself and designate a parent volunteer to do the copying and cutting of materials for you!

Many teachers spend at least a part of their summer curriculum mapping and making a broad sketch of what they’re going to teach for the year. I am a big advocate of working smarter and not harder and pulling resources as you make that curriculam map. It’s much simpler to have something that you know is standards aligned printed in your room, ready to grab and throw on the copier, than it is to sit down and scroll through resources on the computer trying to find some thing in the moment.

Digital Tip: if you’re running short on extra storage space in your classroom because you now have to space desks apart, or you’re not sure what your year is going to look like yet and you don’t want to print everything else at once, I think it works just as well to create folders labeled by domain in Google Drive, Dropbox, or another cloud-based service. When you purchase resources on TPT or elsewhere, you can store those resources in folders by standard or teaching topic so you have them already sorted for you. This way you can simply print what you need in real time, making it easier to roll with the punches of an unknown school year.

To browse my individual math activity packs, or see the big, money-saving bundle, click the link below to shop!

Shop on TPT