It is the beginning of August, which means I have roughly one month until school starts again.  I’m one of those teachers that actually really enjoy the process of setting up my classroom every year.  I am usually the first one in the building, and I come in for at least a few hours just about every week day to set up nice and slow.  There are other teachers that reprimand me for spending my time free in the classroom.  This is a frustration, but if it means I can relax during all the back to school meetings on our staff work days it is worth it to me.

I moved into a new classroom this year.  It took me a full day just to unpack most of my stuff.  I admit, I didn’t unpack any of my teacher supplies, just shoved those boxes into the closet.

I just love an organized closet!

One of my most used areas in my classroom is my assignment board.  Every week, I put all the assignments, standards, targets, and events up on the board for students to refer to.  Students write the assignments in the planners and take them home for parents to see each weekend.  In my old classroom, I had three big white boards.  One whole white board was used for this purpose.  In my new classroom, I only have two white boards.  I will need all that space for teaching each day.  So, I decided to use this wall of cabinets as my new interactive calendar wall.

It took me a while to decide how I could make this space really functional.  It had to be dry erase.  It couldn’t interfere with the cupboards opening and closing.  And, it couldn’t cause damage to the cupboard doors.  Dollar Tree vinyl book covers and my Cricut machine to the rescue!

It took me just over 4 hours to complete this project.  I used my Cricut to cut 10 inch scalloped squares out of the vinyl book covers.  Then put them up on the cupboards in a grid.  The vinyl book covers are sticky, but don’t leave a residue.  They are dry erase-ish.  The marker does leave a bit of darkness when it is erased.  The squares were easy enough to make/put up that I plan to cut extras to have on hand.  Then if one gets particularly grungy, I can just put up a new one!  I’m also excited to have a full month view.  My students really like knowing what is coming up at school.  This large calendar will give me plenty of space to write in events, birthdays, and assignments.

Our class mascot, Earl, approves this message.