I hate trying to keep up with clothes pins, so I immediately dismissed the idea of charts that require moving pins. I like pocket charts, but many of the job templates that I found weren't sized right for the pocket charts I already have. Then I found this idea on Teacher Created Resources, and I began developing my own ideas from there.
Because I have young three-year-olds, I needed the right jobs and picture cues for them. I looked at lots of different templates at Teachers Pay Teachers, and finally settled on this one because it had lots of jobs to choose from. I found library pockets and tiny little clothes pins that I liked on Amazon, and ordered twine to use as the clothes line.
I put up the clothes line with masking tape safe for the paint on the wall, tying a small knot at the end of each line so it wouldn't pull through. I angled each line slightly, and started the new line on top of the previous one, working my way down the wall. Finally I covered the taped ends with a cute border I had on hand, framing my chart.
I chose about 20 jobs that I thought my kids could do easily and labeled each pocket with the pictures and jobs. Then I laminated the pockets to make them more durable, and cut a slit at the pocket opening. It held up even better than I expected! Using the clothes pins, I hung each pocket on the clothes line.
The last step, which I will do this week is to take a full body photo of each kid holding a chalk board with their name, print and laminate them, and then cut them out to use to assign the jobs. I really like having pictures of kids alongside their names, since most of them aren't reading their names yet.
My plan is to change their jobs weekly. I don't think I can keep track of it more often than that! Many of the "jobs" are things we have already been doing haphazzardly, however I plan to spend a week or so really defining the jobs for them and training them how to do them.. Even though it is summer, I hope to get the whole thing up and running in the next few weeks so that when school begins and I have new kids join my summer bunch, I'll already have a core of kids who know what they are doing and can lead the others. I can't wait to see how this new addition affects my classroom!
