Classroom Organization on a Dime: Library Pockets

A friend of mine gave me a great idea (that she borrowed from her former co-teacher) on how to keep track of which books my students have out at any given time. Library pockets! You know, like the kind that are actually in library books. With training starting this week I jumped on this project and started looking around for the best place to buy them. Here's where it got hard: the only place I could get them, without having to order them, was at the teacher store. Sure the teacher store has all different fun colors and patterns of library pockets, but it was over $4 for a package of 25! I currently have over 300 books and I don't know about you, but I just do not have that kind of money to spend on organizing my books. I was standing in the aisle starting to get a little frustrated when I noticed these brown envelops, like the kind you might keep money in. It was $2 for a package of 50. Literally twice as many for less than half the price. Certainly I could do something with these. So I located a box of library checkout cards (a box of 500 was $12 so I added that to the cart as well) and measured to make sure that the envelops were wide enough to fit one of the cards. Thankfully they were and I bought 4 packages which equaled $8. When I got home I opened up the first package and cut them all in half. I don't need a whole envelop for each book and cutting them in half gives me twice the number of pockets per package and four times as many as buying actually library pockets. I stamped the front of each pocket with my classroom library stamp (about $12 plus shipping at www.iprint.com), used a little glue stick on the back and glued it to either the front or back cover of the book. After I wrote the author and title on the library checkout card I slid it into the pocket. It works wonderfully! And it was so much cheaper. Let's take a look at all the money I saved by just being a little creative:

Supplies	Already Made Pockets	Do It Yourself Pockets
Library pockets for 400 books	$72.00	$8.00
Library checkout cards	$12.00	$12.00
Glue sticks	$0.00	$3.00
Total	$84.00	$23.00

That's a savings of $61! It does take more time with the DIY pockets because they aren't the peel 'em and stick 'em kind, but it's well worth it. The owner of the teacher store even said to me that she never thought of doing it that way. By making this project cheaper I will be able to purchase other little things I would not have been able to afford.