Line 'em Up!

Hello friends! How do you line up your kids? This summer I found a wonderful freebie from Primary Possibilities' FB page (BTW it's still there!). It's numbers to put on the floor for when your kids line up. 

So, I printed them and was excited to use them. I decided not to laminate them. The school laminator was out of film and I'm really stingy with my personal one. And my thoughts were, it's going to be taped to the floor, so it really doesn't need to be laminated first. Right?! Well, that was an EPIC FAIL! 

Here's what they look like now 2 months into school: 

The crazy part....I don't understand why they are like that! My kids aren't hard on them and it's not like my floor is mopped often. And not all of them came up, just some. 

So, thank goodness that freebie was still up. I reprinted, laminated and put new ones down. 

The moral of this story is....laminate before you tape to the floor! (at least I hope it lasts this way!)

Just as a side note, I absolutely LOVE having the numbers on the floor. Each of my students have their number to line up on (and I can switch it if I see some friends not working out together). They always know where to line up, there's no pushing to be in the front or back, or even a question of where to go! It also helps the students that have to go through my classroom from another classroom to go to the bathroom. 

At first I thought it might be tough for some of them to remember their number, especially ones that don't know their numbers up into the teens. But they had no problem at all. We did it once to practice and that was all I had to do. I only had one that had trouble finding their spot after the initial practice (and let's face it, it took that child a month to remember where their cubby, rug spot and table spot was...too many spots I guess). 

Do you have a system for lining  your students up? If it's on the floor, how do you keep it there?