Neat Desks, Everyday!

You may already know this trick. My kids (most of them anyway) have kept their desks neat everyday for the past three years!! This pic was snapped today during PE- pretend you don't see the trash on the floor.

At the start of the year we discuss what a neat desk should look like and I draw a diagram that shows the inside of a desk and we label everything to show where it should go. All books, notebooks, and folders are stacked on the left. Notice there are no papers anywhere! The pencil box goes on the right. Each day after the kids leave I put the "Bee Neat" box (our school mascot is a bee) on the neatest desk and they get to enjoy the contents the next day. Inside the box is an egg with silly putty and a squishy ball. They may only play with it when they have finished their work.

It works like a charm! Sometimes the kids even pull out the old diagram of a neat desk to check. This may sound very picky and I'm really not. But if you show the kids exactly what you expect they can usually meet the expectation.