Pinspiration and Tweaking

I love Pinterest and get so much "Pinspiration" from the pins I see and from the many awesome bloggers I follow. However, like most of you, I usually take the great ideas and "tweak" them to make them work for me and my class. Here are a few pics to show ideas I've tweaked.

How many times have you seen this on Pinterest? I didn't really change it much except to add a writing activity (What to do if your snowman came alive)

Making crate seats was all the rage this summer. I had planned to make some but saw these at Big Lots ($14 each) and bought them - saved me time, energy, and frustration in making them. I like that no one can see what is stored inside. 

Chair sacks: My students have desks so I didn't really need chair sacks for desk supplies, but I wanted something to hold individual white boards, markers, and erasers. Chair sacks are so expensive, especially for the purpose I needed them for (and I didn't want to make them!) Instead, I use stretchy jumbo book covers. They work great - no horde of 27 kids all trying to get white boards at the same time. Now everyone has their whiteboards and are ready to go in just seconds.

I don't have wall space for a Word Wall so I hang the words from the ceiling. There was an idea on Pinterest to put the words on the ceiling, but putting words up there each week didn't sound like fun. The word ceiling, though, got me thinking and this is what I came up with. 

I've seen teachers posting guided reading group assignments on the whiteboard. I've tweaked that idea by putting colored paper (my groups are organized by color) into page protectors - the smooth ones. Then I just use a dry erase marker. Now the kids have a short reminder of what independent reading/writing they need to do for their reading group that day and whether or not they are meeting with me (the black numbers).

How have you tweaked a great idea you've seen on Pinterest and/or blogland?