Sunday, August 12, 2012

Tips and Tidbits

 Sorry for the lack of posts this last week, Andi and I went on a small vaction with our family to relax - because as crazy as it sounds, school starts THIS week!! So today I thought I would share a couple of little things that I have found helpful in my classroom, and hope you do as well!

Erasing Permanent Marker from Laminate:

As most teachers do I laminate all my posters and decorative accents before writing on them, however dry erase markers wipe off too easily and permanent markers are too hard to erase.  So I discovered this tip on the Internet a couple of years ago, and it has become a staple in my routine.  If you take a black dry erase marker and  scribble over the permanent marker, it easily erases and your cute classroom decorations are good to go for another year!



Attaching Non-Laminated Items With Hot Glue

Hot glue is God's gift to teachers and decorating, however, it's not so friendly to paper products that have not been laminated.  So thanks to my good friend and fellow hot glue aficionado, Jill - she taught me that if you put a strip of scotch tape on the back of your letters or borders and then put hot glue on that strip, your items come off easily and aren't ruined afterward!




Paper Trays

I had these two paper trays that hold my loose leaf and scrap paper, but the problem was, they were too big and took up too much room on my table. Once again my hot glue gun came to the rescue and I made my own stackable paper tray by turning one perpendicular to the other and gluing them together.




From Organizing Jewelry to Organizing Lunch

I found this jewelry organizer for about $5 at Dollar General and it worked perfectly for lunch count.  It originally had 12 small pockets so using some hot glue I was able to separate two of the larger pockets into 6 smaller ones giving me 20 individual student pockets that I numbered using some vinyl and a 1 inch circle punch.    I then punched circles in 3 different colors, 1 for school lunch, 1 for sack lunch, and 1 for salad.  I housed the circles in the bottom pocket, and will have my kids put the appropriate color circle in their pocket when they first enter in the morning.


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