Going beyond the crate seat

This year, I plan on diving in head first into flexible seating.  To make this work, though, I need a wide range of seating options for the students.  My first go to was to make some crate seats.  They're not too hard to make and they offer a great storage option, which goes hand in hand with my goal of getting more organized!  I decided to take the crate seat idea one step further.  With the addition of one simple step, I turned the crate seat into a multi-purpose tool: a crate seat, lap desk, and dry erase board!  Below, I explain step by step how to make them and I briefly talk about some of their great uses!  I also have a YouTube video below, which takes you through the process step-by-step!  They are super easy, inexpensive, and a great alternative to your normal seating.  My friend, Miss Tinnish, taught me how to make the crate seats, so I know they worked for her firsties, and I know my fifth graders will love them!  You can go ahead and just watch the video, but I will also type out the steps in detail with pictures!  Hope you find it informational and useful!

  

First, the materials you need: 

• mattress pad
• sheet of wood
• sheet of white panel board
• fabric squares 
• staple gun
• hammer
• scissors or knife
• duct tape
• ribbon
• heavy duty glue or liquid nails

First, you want to place your fabric square face down so that the less colorful side is facing you.  I went to Walmart and bought some pre-cut fabric squares.  They were super inexpensive and SO MUCH EASIER than cutting the fabric myself.  

On top of the fabric square, in the center you want to place your mattress pad with the flat side facing down.  At Walmart, I also bought a regular full size mattress pad and measured and cut it into the size I needed.  I got about 15 pieces of mattress pad from one full sized mattress pad.  

On top of the mattress pad, you want to place the piece of wood with the rougher side facing the mattress pad.  I went to Home Depot with one of my crates, picked out my sheet of wood, and one of the employees measured the crate and cut the sheet of wood into the exact size I needed!  It was awesome and I didn't have to do anything other than transport the wood!  Seems pretty simple so far, huh?  Just a bunch of stacking... Here comes the real work! 

Starting with the long edges, you are going to want to pull the fabric over the side of the wood and use your staple gun to staple the fabric to the side of the wood facing you.  I like to put 5 staples on the long sides.  I put the first staple right in the middle, then one in each corner, and then one in between those three placer staples.  

After doing one long side, I go to the other side and repeat the same process.  This is what it will look like: 

Once both long sides are done, I move on to the short edges.  On the short edges, I only put 4 staples.  I like to make the corners neat, so I tuck the fabric between the wood and the mattress pad.  It is like to wrapping a present, and at this point, the edge should look something like a manila envelope lip. 

Then it is just a matter of pulling the fabric over and stapling again!! 

Once you are done with that, it is time to add your handles!  This will make pulling the seat out of the crate easier and it will make carrying the lap desks easier for the students!  You're going to take a piece of ribbon and cut it to whatever length you think is appropriate for your handles.  The piece of ribbon needs to be long enough so that when folded in half, the handle is as long as you want it.  You're going to fold the ribbon in half and then staple.  It should look like the image below: 

Once you've done this on both sides, you should take your duct tape and reinforce the fabric on the wood.  You are going to follow the edges of the fabric so that it looks something like this: 

Now, my duct tape is purple, which I know doesn't match the whole turquoise and grey scheme I've going on.  With my crate seats and the added step I do, it doesn't matter because the tape is not going to be seen at all.  If you are going to stop here and not do these next few steps, I recommend getting duct tape that matches your fabric and ribbons.  If you are looking for JUST a crate seat, then congrats!  You're done!!! But, if you want to take the traditional crate seat just a bit further, then we've got a few more steps.  

It is time for your heavy duty glue/ liquid nails!  You are going to put dots of whichever you get on the back side of the seat, wood face up.  You are going to put 11 dots of the liquid glue in total.  This is where you should put them: 

Once you have these down, you are going to get your piece of panel board (while I was at Home Depot, I had the same employee cut a sheet of panel board for me, in the same dimensions as the wood!)  With the white part facing up (towards you), you are going to firmly press down the panel board on top of the wood.  Hold firmly for a few minutes and then you are going to want to let them sit for a few hours to make sure they completely dry and adhere.  

Here is your final product: 

On one side, you have a comfy crate seat and on the other you now have a white board!  If students want to work independently on the floor and need somewhere to do work, they can grab one of these flip it to use as a lap desk, and grab a dry erase marker to do their work!  It is functional and flexible!  This is going to going to be an AMAZING addition to my flexible seating classroom!  I am SO excited to put these to use!  How about you?  Do you have any other ideas for how we can step up and transform the traditional crate seat?  Any questions, comments, or ideas please comment below!  Thanks for reading and I hope this was useful!! Follow me on instagram for more snap shots of my classroom as it all comes together: @funinfifthwithmisschmura 

What is your biggest weakness?

I can say with 100% certainty that organization is my biggest weakness.  My creativity, bizareness, and free spiritedness have a tendency to contribute to little clusters of messes around my room (both in the classroom and at home).  Then I can't find something or I forget something.  It's the worst sometimes!  I have a multitude of goals for this year, but my primary one is to keep myself organized!! Well, I took the first step in this journey to organizing my crazy and got myself an AMAZING planner.

   

This planner is an Erin Condren.  It was a little pricey, but what I've definitely learned in life is that you get what you pay for!  And this planner definitely gives you a bang for your buck! First of all, as you can see they're adorable!! They have SO many different designs, this just happened to be the one I chose since blue is my favorite color, and I LOVE the quote on the front!  But, I definitely didn't get the planner just because it was cute!  It is extremely practical and has some AMAZING features specifically for teachers! 

First of all, aesthetically there are so many components that aren't only cute but are functional also.  The front cover has a space for your name and any other information you'd like to contribute.  What I don't have pictured is right after that cover page, there are two pages that have sections for: personal information, access codes and usernames, web resources, classroom volunteers, special events, and helpful hints for the substitute.  At the back there is a two pocket folder for where you can add any paperwork you might need to.  All throughout the planner there are little inspirational quotes at any natural page break.  The one I pictured says, "The art of teaching is to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."  Finally, both the front and back cover are laminated so you can use dry erase markers for making easily editable to do lists and what not.  

Before we even get to the monthly calendar, there are a few more features you'll find that are extremely useful!  There is a section with holidays and dates to remember.  I loved this part because it doesn't just do generic holidays, it also includes dates like authors birthdays.  I thought this would be great for lesson planning and planning a day in dedication to different authors and important people.  It also has a space to keep track of absences.  I think this will be great in easily catching the repeat offenders.  I know my district's website is a little confusing to navigate in regards to absences, so this will be easy to just look at or pull out during a parent meeting.  There is also a space for graphing information, and we as teachers ALL know how important tracking data and information is!  The final section before we hit the calendars is the a space to keep track of long range plans.  I like the idea of having a space that has the general long range plans in and I plan on pinning a copy of my details plans right behind it.  

Finally we get to the calendar.  I love that with Erin Condren, you can choose what month to start your planner with.  I chose August because that is when school starts for me, but you can choose any month you please and they will give you 12 months, starting from there!  After the 12 months, there is a section for daily lessons.  I'm not the type of person to read my detailed lesson plans as I teach throughout the day.  Rather, I like to write up a general outline of activities-a skeleton of lesson-so to speak and go from there. This will be extremely helpful with this since before I would just write it on a piece of paper every morning and end up with papers every where or losing my skeleton outline throughout the day.  Like this I can pre-enter every skeleton over the weekend and have it all in one place that will be hard to lose!  Finally, we come to my FAVORITE feature: THE STUDENT CHECKLIST.  This could just be me being a dork, but I love this feature because I think it'll make inputting grades SO much quicker.  Like this I'll be able to just go down the list, and plug in grades on the computer rather than have to find each students assignment and then their name and then type in the grade.  This will definitely cut some steps and save some time.  

Overall, I'm extremely happy with this planner and definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good planner that allows for great organization.  Hopefully this keeps me organized and helps me organize the rest of my classroom (and life haha)!  What is your biggest weakness?  What is your step 1 in improving yourself?  Reflection is key in our job!  Never forget that!