Magnetic Pages Make Life Easier!

Sometimes I feel like I go out of my way to make things more difficult!

Now maybe you all know this trick, but it was new to me!  For YEARS, I have made calendar tags--and other things to put on my (magnetic) white board.  I would print the item, cut it out, put it on a piece of colored background paper, laminate, cut again, and then buy and apply small magnetic strips to the back.  By this point I had either lost pieces of the project along the way or I had lost interest (or I had killed off a few necessary components in our ancient laminating machine!)

Enter Avery magnetic sheets.  The good thing about magnetic PAGES is that you can cut out any size or shape you want--and you don't have to line anything up within the label margins!  It's just like printing on 8.5 by 11 paper! The same is true about full pages "labels," but that is the subject of another post!

                   
I made rectangles on my computer and typed a word.  I made a bigger rectangle around those, filled in the shape with color, and sent it to the "back".  I filled in the names of the month, the numbers and a few other labels that I wanted, adjusting the size as necessary.

I printed the labels on the magnetic pages (using an ink jet printer).  Then I cut them out on my beloved paper cutter, and... DONE!  The whole project took me less than an hour!  They're fairly resilient and while the magnets won't hold much weight--that wasn't my purpose.  My real purpose was to get the job done and get it done quickly.  Mission accomplished!

If I were more creative, I would have used different colors and a bit of clip art.  But this is the no-nonsense part of the board.  We look at the date a million times and we post who is absent (and, at times, keep track of total enrollment).  Sometimes, I just like to look at that part of the board when I am exhausted and frustrated, and say, "Thirty four sixth graders!  That IS exhausting!

So... easy peasy!  Amazon had a discounted price at one point and I am sure they are available at lots of places (and there may be other manufacturers too)  But for my purpose, these worked great.

Test:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4jzf7IrF9Y7bFNPTlp5Q3hROGc

And the time I saved... well... there's a good chance I spent it BLOGGING for more ideas!