First Grade...Hooray!: For the Love of Binders

Who loves binders? Me, me! I do, I do! I love them so much I decided my whole classroom filing system needed to be converted from files to binders. Yes, that's 20 years of files converted to binders right on my kitchen table in July. Because what else is there to do in July when you're a teacher? Right Kristin from ateenytinyteacher.blogspot.com? She is my inspiration (or shall I say cause my inferiority complex?) After reading all about Kristin's decision to convert her filing system, I was ready to tackle the project myself. Just me, binder, page protectors, my computer, and a lot of time. Remember, it was July and I am a teacher. That means I had a lot of time of my hands...oh, if only...

So, off I went to Walmart. Inexpensive binder and page protectors R Us! Even still, my vacation money began to disappear on school supplies. Oh well, I will just love these binders for the rest of my life ( or until I get some other idea of organization!) So, I stocked up. My "green" friend Andrea would be so disappointed in the copious amounts of plastic that adorned my kitchen table. However, I trudged on toward complete binder organization.

After a few days of sitting and stuffing sheet after sheet of paper into plastic protectors, I began to see progress. In fact, I loved the slick feel as I flipped the pages of my beautiful binders. Only teachers can understand the love of school supplies like this. Soon, I had binders for each month and their themes, Language Arts, Literature, Math, Writing, Assessment, Morning Work, and Miscellaneous. What a beautiful thing...

Do you see the lights from "Teacher Heaven" shining down?

I would like to point our one thing...there is no Miscellaneous binder. That is because it is nowhere to be found. Remember last week when I said I often throw things away and my husband has to dumpster dive to find them? Well I wish that was the case. However, in all my grand organization, I misplaced my miscellaneous file, therefore, there is NO miscellaneous binder. Boo hoo! So, for that, I start from scratch. Yippee...another project.

I am just starting to post items on Teachers Pay Teachers. If you'd like to see the binder covers here is the link. Nicole Bickham's Binder Covers Here is a sample: