multi-tasking months.

Today's post will probably go completely against the organizational mold, and may even cause a couple "surely not's!" to be uttered, but here goes. When it comes to storage, multi-tasking bins are not the way to go. One tub that houses your hair dryer, freshly cut watermelon, and craft supplies is probably not the best way to contain your clutter. It's more efficient to work in categories. Have one bin that houses all of your electrical cords or all of your paint brushes, etc.  Doy.

But when we start to move away from storage and move into tools and supplies, I love me a good multi-tasking scheme. In our classroom, we are so very very lucky to have an entire wall of windows! They grant us fabulous natural lighting, a lovely view of the neighborhood, and an open, cheery feeling in our room. But without that fourth wall, our bulletin board space is a bit limited. Rather than being Mrs. Grouch about that darn sunlight joyfully filtering into my room, I just got creative with our board space!

In an effort to conserve space, I felt it might be prudent to condense our birthday board, months of the year board, and calendar supplies into one space!

I wanted this wall post to serve many purposes:

• I needed a space to display each student's birthday.
• I needed a place to display the months of the year in chronological order for an easy reference for the kids.
• I wanted to use calendar supplies I already have rather than having 2 complete sets of months (one for our calendar wall and one for our birthday wall).

Here was my solution. I decided to place all of our months of the year in chronological order on one wall post.

I applied velcro (reinforced with hot glue for longevity) to the month card and the wall.

This would allow the months of the year to be posted throughout the year, like these...

...and then I could just remove the current month to post on our calendar wall.

When a month is on the calendar wall, I cover the velcro on the post with a little ladybug placeholder.

After velcroing all of the months to the wall, I then placed a cupcake with each child's name and birthdate under their respective birth month.

So let's see if this wall met my expectations:

• I needed a space to display each student's birthday. {check}
• I needed a place to display the months of the year in chronological order for an easy reference for the kids. {check}
• I wanted to use calendar supplies I already have rather than having 2 complete sets of months (one for our calendar wall and one for our birthday wall). {check for cheap!}

I really love our little system. I love that the month cards serve three purposes {chronological order, birthdays, and calendar} on a single wall post.

I do plan to make one change next year, however. Within my little group this year, we had eleven {count 'em} ELEVEN birthdays within the little month of February. What are the odds?! You can imagine the time I had fitting 11 oversized cupcakes under the February card. With that in mind, I love this idea I found on Pinterest (I can't find the original source!) of putting a picture of each month's birthday kids under the birthday cards.

What a fabulous way to save space while still giving each muffin their moment in the spotlight!

• I didn't have to buy two calendar sets to meet my needs - I am able to use one set of calendar cards to accomplish three tasks.
• A very small space was transformed into a multi-tasking superstar!

How do y'all post your birthdays? What do your calendar boards look like?