Crafty Organizing

Any of my friends will tell you that I love doing crafts and I am a bit crazy about organizing! :-) I think both of these traits are a plus when you are teaching. Here are some neat things I was able to make to use in my classroom.




Fabric Covered Crates - Teachers are always in need of more storage, and these crates functioned really well for storing student journals and notebooks! (Not to mention what a super cute addition to the classroom decor!) I found the tutorial here: The Undercover Crate

Drawstring Bags for Playing Cards - if you are teaching math with TERC Investigations, you play alot of card games (or even games that use cards in place of dice). I was going crazy trying to get kids to put their cards back in their ziplock bags, but the bags would get lost, trampled on, ripped up, etc., and I would get stacks of loose cards left on my teacher table that would get knocked over or mixed up with other stacks. Finally I figured if I made some cute little bags with different fabric, they might be able to keep track of them better and make sure the right cards ended up in the right bags! It really worked! From that point on, whenever the cards were turned into me, they always came back in their cute bags! (Sorry, no link for this as I just made it up with a few trials-and-errors! I started with a 4 1/2" x 14 1/2" strip of fabric, folded the two ends down by about 1 1/2 inches, then sewed 2 lines across the folded fabric for a casing.)

Flash Card Bags - I have found that when working with young children, not only are they less careful about taking care of those cardboard boxes that flashcards come in; they also have a difficult time getting the cards in an even stack and slid back into that tiny opening in the box...so I thought bags would work for these as well. They are a larger version than the playing cards - I started with 2 strips of 6" x 18 1/2" fabric (one for outside, one for lining), making the casing lines at 2" and 2 1/2" from the end.