Teacher Aprons

How cute is this? Teachers need to keep up with so many things. These teacher aprons can be a great help with efficiency. ID, keys, pens, highlighters, phone, hand sanitizer, and so many other things can be easily in reach with these aprons.  I know I was always laying the remote to the projector down and having to look around for it. This apron can fix that little problem!

 You can make them to match your classroom theme, holidays, or use seasonal fabrics. 

The photo above is a Spring-inspired teacher apron. My daughter and I make them in the themes and colors that our colleagues ask for. We looked at some patterns and some other aprons on Pinterest, but then we just jumped in and made them with the needs of teachers in mind.

This apron is worn in a Superheroes themed classroom and the prints match the curtains in the classroom.  The students noticed immediately when the teacher first walked in with this apron on. Pow! Blam!

One of the classroom instructional assistants ordered this Frog themed apron. She was always on the go between various classrooms and was forever misplacing things, but this apron kept her organized.

This one was made for a teacher who wanted UK Blue and dark colors that wouldn't show dirt too quickly - elementary schools can really keep you busy with laundry, right?  She also wanted the taller row of pockets big enough for an iPad mini. (not shown in photo, but it works!)

This one is one of my daughter's favorites and matches her new Domestic Cat themed classroom. The print is Choco Cat, Hello Kitty's friend. 

The first thing you need to do is decide what size you want the apron to be. Most of ours are 22 inches wide by 18 inches long. We cut two of these, one for the front and one for the back. (They do not have to be of the same print) 

Next,  we make the taller set of pockets in a contrasting fabric. We cut it the width of the entire apron but double the height we want the pocket to be. It's usually around 8 inches high so we cut this piece 16 inches high with a width of our 22 inches. Then we fold it in half and press the fold. 

We lay this fold-side-at-the-top, over our front piece of the apron, lining things up at the bottom and the sides, and pin.

Then we stitch from the bottom to the top of the pocket, maybe 3 times; this makes 4 separate pockets.

The shorter set of pockets are made and attached the same way as the taller pockets.  If you want a 5 inch pocket, cut the fabric 10 inches tall and 22 inches wide. Press. Stitch onto the taller pockets. You can stitch them in the same place, or in different places.  Stitching close together will give you great "pen pockets."

Next, we put the back piece of the apron on top of the section with the pockets, right-side-together and stitched around the side, bottom, and other side in one continuous line, leaving it open at the top. Then we turned it right-side-out and trimmed the seams. 

Then we pressed it, pushing at the corners to make them look nice.

Then we cut a long piece of fabric to be the waistband of the apron and the ties, maybe 6 feet long, depending on the size of your teacher, and 6 inches wide. (See photo below)  Sometimes we stitch the contrasting fabrics here - as long as it measures around 60+ inches long, this can give your apron a nice effect.     

We press it in half all the way down the long piece, then open that up and press the edges on both sides to touch the middle, as if we are making a custom piece of bias tape.  We ironed 22 inches  by 1  1/2 inches of interfacing into the center of our waist band so that it would be a little stiffer just about the apron.

The last thing we did was place the apron's top (where it is open) into the center of the waistband and pinned it all the way to the ends of the ties.  (look at the photo below, where we are putting the apron up into the waistband so that we can pin it, then sew it)

Once we sewed this, we were done!   They really don't take long at all once you make two or three.  

I like to run the ties around to the front and tie a knot.  Some like to make a bow in the back. Either way, you could make a teacher very happy with a custom apron that matches the classroom theme!

           This owl print made an interesting apron for an owl lover.

Thank You Booklets

This creativity project can work for many times of the school year - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Veteran's Day, and many more.  Appreciating others is an important piece of student growth.

Students chose a piece of scrapbook paper. They chose who they wanted to make a Thank You Booklet for.  They were given a few minutes to plan what they would write on each of the pages.

I walked them through how to fold and cut the scrapbook paper to make the booklet.  Here's a link so I won't have to try to explain - One Sheet 8 pages!

Then, their creativity took hold of the room! My favorite part of this project was how different they all were. Some were professional, some were funny, some were heartfelt. All of them seemed to bring up memories of events they were truly thankful for.

Make sure your students are given time to make a quality product. They also love to have time to share their work with their peers so plan for this.

After doing this project with gifted and talented students identified in Creativity, I began to hear from parents, siblings, and other teachers about how much the Thank You booklet meant to them.  I have a feeling many of them will be kept and treasured for years to come.

Historical Overview of Inventions Bulletin Board and Unit Ideas

If you teach the Seven Habits in your classroom and happen to be fortunate enough to have a huge bulletin board, you might want to set it up like this.  This 15-foot  bulletin board was in the Gifted and Talented wing where I taught the last 3 years before I retired. My team teacher and I set up the right end of the board with the word LEADERS. Under that we switched out each of the seven habits every few weeks, and focused on them in all of the study and research the students were involved in. The rest of the board always held current projects from 4th or 5th grade district-wide gifted students.

(SOMEWHERE in all the tubs of things I brought home after retirement are lots of my big watercolors of the characters. Watch for them on Ebay - the plan is to get lots of my decorations on there for other classrooms to enjoy!)

Here is just one sample of the many great uses for student work on the big bulletin board. (This idea took up so much room we had to put the current habit on the other board across from this one.) In this photo, we see the board almost finished - as students shared their inventor of choice research, they added it to the board in the timeline section.

My team teacher and I threw this Unit together so that it fit our student needs from several sources. This one, on Amazon, might be a great place to start if you want to do the same:  Inventions Thematic Unit 

This is what the students viewed at the beginning of the unit. The title "Historical Overview of Inventions" was at the top, timeline chunks of years were left to right, Inventor cards were in groups all around the edges, and (not in photos) to the left of the bulletin board was a color-code chart that explained, for instance, technology - green, etc.  Students were given a reasonable amount of time to explore the categories and inventors on the board, then took the name of the one they wanted to research.

When the research was done and students had written up a paper to share with the class, they gave a speech and then put their writing on the board in the correct timeline section with construction paper coordinated with the category behind it.   

The students who were listening to each speech had a short rubric to fill out. This kept them engaged and reinforced our study of the things that make good speeches. Each student also did a rubric on themselves, to self-assess. 

We all learned a lot, and when the parents came later for student-led conferences, this board was great  way to share knowledge.