DIY Dry Erase Boards!

Having a solution for creating your own portable DIY dry erase boards is easy and fun!   Of course, you could buy a set of white boards.  Or go to Home Depot or another home improvement store and have them cut you shower board into smaller pieces to use.  Or perhaps you prefer to use a large picture frame from the dollar store for your DIY project.

All good ideas.  In fact, I have personally done all above.

But I have an old school idea that seems to work the best for me and my students.

I needed something that was clear, reusable, would write and wipe off easily, and was light to transport an entire class set.

So, as a fellow Pinterest junkie (though my addiction is not so bad right now), I found a great picture of some homemade dry erase board options, but could not find a blog post with directions to match for this particular style, so I decided to try my hand at it myself.

How to make a DIY Dry Erase Board

Today I’m going to show you a cool little tip for how to make your own dry erase board of sorts.

The best part?  Super cheap.

You’re going to start with these simple slide report covers.  I got mine at Wal-Mart.

Why report covers and not sheet protectors?  Personally, I find that the plastic report covers have a firmer surface to write on and tend to wipe off cleaner from the marker residue.

Then you’re also going to need duct tape. That’s it. Duct tape. Now, you can use plain old silver duct tape, or you can actually use packing tape, or they have now pattern duct tape as well. I’ve seen that a lot of places. You can choose what you’d like to do with it. I made a little bit of both.

Basically what you do is you take one of your really cool little clear slide report covers, and then  you are going to make a pen a border around it, which is half the width of however wide your tape is.

My tape was 48 millimeters wide, so therefore I did a border only on one side around the edges of 24 millimeters. Go ahead and mark it with your ruler and do it lightly with a pen.  {I found that a pencil does not work as well with it.}

Finally you’re just going to place tape around the borders.

How about a couple different ways that you could customize it?

First up is silver duct tape action.  I only put it on two sides because I wanted to be able to see the paper well.  Then I also left this side open so that way I can get papers in and out.

You could have students do their math facts timed tests in them by placing students down at a center with a timer, and they can sit and fill in their test until the timer goes off.

You can have an answer key right next to it if you would like. They check it, maybe record their current score on a data graph, and then take a dry erase eraser and it erases right off.  Super easy!

Another example I did with some green packing tape and I left the wide side open again.

For a good lesson idea, you could use improper fractions Mad Libs. They could fill in the words on their dry erase cover and then check each other’s work when both are finished.

Or if you had a specific multiple choice question test in the cover instead, then you could have students carefully remove their paper … {Note:  I did this one on card stock because I don’t want to be able to see through it.}

…now it’s backwards so now they flip it over and they can check to see if their answer is matched up correctly as well. Self-checking answers for the win!

This piece could be done even in permanent marker if you wanted to because you don’t want them to be able to erase that off.

For the last example, I closed all four sides so it does not have an opening. Instead of students sliding a paper in, they would just place the clear board on top of their paper.

A good example would be for simple practice or even as a drawing board.

What I love most about this classroom solution is that they are so lightweight.  Unlike a stack of hard whiteboards, you could easily grab 30 of these and toss into a teacher bag if you wanted to take your class outside for a lesson and needed something to record on.

Plus, these are so cheap to create yourself.

No time to get them made?  Send the supplies home to a parents and you wouldn’t even have to do it yourself.  So easy.

Use them for morning work by having the sleeves already place on their desks upon arrival in the morning.  They grab their paper, set their dry erase sleeve over top, and use the dry erase marker to fill in.

Then you can review the answers together and students hand the supplies right back to you to be used another day.

Talk about recycling.

I know some schools only allow a limited amount of copies and that’s it, so this would be a great alternative to having to run papers for every single student just for work that they’re probably going to throw away anyway.

Obviously you probably don’t want to use this option for an assessment because you’ll want  documentation, but just for regular or morning work, these are a fantastic solution.

Even if they were ruined after a year’s worth of use, you can inexpensively replace them and start over again.

I think I paid $1.29 for a package of 6 report covers.

The packing tape was $2.00 a roll.  I could probably get four or five covers created out of that roll I would guess.

I’m pretty sure very few classroom materials would be as cheap or easy to create.

Do you prefer to see and hear a video explanation?  I’ve got you covered below!

Dry Erase Handouts for Students

Do you need more handout ideas to use with your new classroom DIY creations?   Check out each of these fun seasonal freebies:

• The Great Candy Comparison:  Too much leftover Halloween candy? I have a fun math lesson plan solution for the week AFTER Halloween!  A fun way to use manipulative learning!

• Free Mrs. McNosh Activities Pack:  Use with the book Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash!

• Classroom Library Checkout Systems:  A few classroom library checkout system ideas for your classroom library organization setup.

• Rubrics ‘R’ Us:  Rubric generators are perfect for classroom differentiation and assessment. Customize yours with an online rubric maker or start with this blank template.

• Sports Rhyme Time Friday Freebie!:  A fun sport theme rhyming activity!

• Irish Creative Writing Kit:  Whatever you choose, you’ll feel like a leprechaun who has hit the pot of gold when you hear the kids’ creative writing stories all about everything green!

• 7 Classroom Luau Learning Ideas:  Pool noodles seem like pretty much a summer activity, but it turns out there are lots of ways to use pool noodles for DIY crafts! Here are a few ideas…

• What Happened to Groundhog Day Activities for Kids?:  I remember Groundhog Day activities when I was a student were much more pronounced than they are today.  It would be an entire day of facts about groundhogs, groundhog reading activities, and games that were groundhog-approved.

• Silly Stories Fall Freebie!:  Celebrate fall with this super fun silly fill-in-the-blank stories template made just for the season! Enjoy!

• Free Poetry Pack for YOU!:  An easy to create template for making custom poems.

• Telling Time Rollers!:  A worksheet for analog clock time practice – using dice.

• Loving A Quick Place Value Dice Freebie:  Little monsters, dice, and place value.  What’s there not to love?

• Elephants in School?:  An activity pack that correlates with Never Ride Your Elephant to School.

• Classroom Tech in 3 Minutes or Less!:  Have students practice graphing skills with these activity cards.

I hope you enjoy!  If you have crafty or cool ideas of tips and tricks you use in the classroom, please feel free to let me know, and maybe I will make a video for all to see and credit you!

See you there!

~Charity