Glass Gem Magnets
These are floating around on the Internet, and I decided to make some to use on my whiteboards and various other magnetic surfaces. I found last year that magnets were great for everything, from displaying student work or no-name papers to posting center directions or word problems around the room. If I had more money at my disposal, I would probably paint every possible surface with magnetic paint and just us magnets for everything. Kids can't use magnets (well, not these magnets, anyway) as weapons as easily as they can pushpins and staples. Plus, magnets don't put holes in your documents.
How to Make Fancy Magnets:
I bought some black circle magnets (about $2.50 for a pack of eight) and a bag of those clear glass gems that you often see on the bottom of vases or some fish tanks. Then, I used my Xacto blade to cut out circles from my fancy paper. If I had one of those hole punchers I have seen, this project would have been much faster and looked a little better, but I'm still happy with how they turned out. After I cut out my paper, I put a dab of tacky glue on the magnets, laid on the paper, but one more little dab of tacky glue, and smushed on the glass gems. I tried to use the larger, more circular ones. I let them dry overnight, and now they will go one the board. (I am fortunate to have a magnetic whiteboard instead of the cheap imitation "shower board" they sell at Home Depot. Cheep shower board is great, however, if you want to make a class set of little whiteboards. It's about $8 for a large sheet and I even got them to cut it down for me for free!)
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