Making beautiful things

During my student teaching I was poking around the classroom, totally in awe of all these fun things I was just learning how to use and teach when I found them. These beautiful, colorful, enticing....folders. Yeah, like a folder you're supposed to organize your papers in for school.

In fact these were the cultural folders for the classroom, each one color coded for the continents of the world and containing pictures of all sorts of different scenes from that continent. Lucy, the absolutely wonderful guide, saw me admiring them and admitted that she had just gotten around to finally making them, even though they had been on her "to do" list since leaving training years ago.

Now it's not that these fabric folder were that spectacularly beautiful. Sure they were well sewn and had a fun color scheme, but it was the contrast to other versions of that material I had been seeing in different classrooms. Some teachers had put the pictures in paper folders that seemed to inevitably get bent, ripped, torn, etc. and just look tattered. Other used plastic pockets of some kind that also quickly got cracked or broken in some way. Yes, we're supposed to teach the children how to handle things gently and with respect but still, they're in preschool and things happen.

But these colorful, fabric ones weren't going to do that. It might have taken a bit more money and time, but they were going to last far longer than one school year and still look great.  I immediately decided that was how I wanted to make my folders too. And now, almost 6 years later, those same folders are still lovely and enjoyed by the children in my classroom.

A monkey see monkey do moment as one child inspires others to get out their own cultural folder to enjoy
The penguins in Antarctica always seem to be the favorite and l love showing them that they are in Africa too!

Now, this isn't just about the cultural folders though. It's about thinking how to offer children beautiful, quality things that will last (especially in a classroom setting!). Whenever I'm looking at making or buying a new materials I'm sub-consciously thinking about these folders. I want to have something that's able to be used independently by the children, but will hold up to them fumbling through how to use it the first few times. Something that can be easily fixed by me if it does break/tear/fail for some reason. I have a box of fabric scraps of things I've sewn for the classroom, and some cardstock remmanents for printed materials.

We want to be able to tell children that they are worth our time and effort. That they are worthy of things which are valuable (both monetarily and personally). And I know that I don't want to spend time walking around my classroom cringing about how tattered and torn something looks!

So I'm trying.
Trying to make it well the first time.