Teacher Binder 2013-14 Edition

Welcome again to another week of #Made4Math! :) I really thought that I would have several goodies to share with you, but this week's project took longer than I expected. :) However, I'm SO excited about how it turned out and hope you enjoy it too!

** Disclaimer - I have shared the files with you at the end of this post, but when I uploaded it to Google Drive, the font obviously did not come through. I thought of doing it as a pdf, but then it was close to 5meg and you would lose the editability. :( **

Font Credit: The font used below is called Digs My Hart and is my current FAV font! Download it HERE

Background Graphics Credit: The background graphics are from the ColourLovers website. Thanks to @mathtastrophe's post HERE for guiding me through the process!

And of course, thanks to all of my twitter friends that listened to me hem and haw about what I wanted in a binder! :)

Finally.... on to the binder itself!

The Cover...

Honestly, the cover is what started this whole thing! Following @mathtastrophe's instructions, I set out to make just a binder cover (or 20 of them, but who's counting??) :) The back cover looks the same, just doesn't have the text oval in the middle :)

That lead to...

The Dividers...

For my binder, I made three of these... one for the calendar pages, one for my gradebook, and one for meeting notes.

The pages...
I knew I wanted a monthly calendar in there. However, from last year's binder, I knew that if the monthly calendar was in a separate section, I never used it! (P.S. - In the file, you'll see a blank page before the left hand August page. That's where you can copy/paste your district calendar or leave it as a notes page or whatever.)

The thing I really used my notebook for last year was my lesson planning. So I recreated the lesson plan format that I liked, but put it side by side with a weekly agenda. Now I have plenty of room for notes, to-do lists, and more!

In my last divider, I have space for meeting notes. I redid my meetings page from last year to fit a bit better based on a year's worth of work :)

To bind or not to bind?
I have to give kudos to my twitter buddies and my hubby for listening to me as I was so indecisive about how to bind this thing! I really like the look of the coil binding (see my #Made4Math post a few weeks ago), but since I wanted my gradebook in here too, I knew that coil binding would be impractical. Last year I used a Mead FlexBinder, but wasn't really crazy about it, especially as it got thicker towards the end of the year. Traditional binders can be annoying since they don't fold back like a spiral. In the end, I decided just to try binder rings and so far I think I'll like it! I printed the front and back covers on white cardstock before laminating them. The dividers are also laminated, but not on cardstock. The binder rings will allow me to have the notebook similar to a spiral if I wish, but still should be thick enough to provide some stability during those faculty meetings in the auditorium!

The file
If you want a copy of my binder, get it HERE :)
**Note: The file is on google docs, so you will want to go to File:Download to get the PPT file!

Now head on over to the #Made4Math blog to see what others created this week!