Vinyl Covered Art Tables

Always trying something new to manage the classroom better. Well, here's the latest experiment. Plastic covers for each of my tables. I bought some heavy duty vinyl from Walmart... the heavy duty stuff works the best.  I tried some light weight vinyl but that was destroyed quickly. This is the stuff you want to look for (click here)

I did this for a lot of reasons. First I thought it would be nice to have colored tables.  I have little hanging decorations above the tables but I thought it might make my room look bright and cheery if the tables were colored as well. 

Second,  I'm starting to run out of wall space.  I love the TAB rooms that have all the amazing resources around the room for every medium.  Such great resources.  I have these TREMENDOUS windows that I adore in my classroom... So that means less wall space.  By placing plastic on my tables I can have resources under the plastic that the kids can use.  I'm not a TAB classroom (yet) but I love the idea of stations for each medium. That was my model.  I have a drawing, painting, fibers, sculpture, and printing table as of now.  Each of these tables have resources that are specific to the art that can/should be created at that space. 

For example, here is my fibers area.  These images were found at the following sites... Wee Folk Art,  Thread Needles Street, Sublime Stitching (one of my favorites), Origami Resource Center, and Annie's Craft Store.

Here is my drawing table:

Here is my sculpture station.  Some of the images came from Wonder Brooks (great blog), Creative Parties, and The Art of Education.

And my painting table.

Speaking of painting... That brings me to reason number three why I have covered my tables.  THE MESS!! This has made is so easy to quickly wipe up all art mess.  I have students use drawing boards when drawing so they have a hard surface.

Reason number four, I'm using the plastic as a tool on the printing table.  Instead of resources, I have created some registration blocks for under the table. The pink is the same size as my Gelli Plates and the blue is the same size as a small sheet of paper they might use and the green gives a larger size sheet. I glued them down and covered the table with plastic.  The Gelli plates stick really well to the plastic too... Can't wait to give it a try with my students. 

Last week I played the following video for each of my classes.  It was really annoying to listen to for 30 classes... but the kids paid attention and they have been good so far with the plastic.  I'm hoping this will help keep this nice and usable to for the year.