Covering Open-Shelving: my classroom makeover

I have some wall-mounted shelves in my classroom.

I adore the storage.

I loathe the visual clutter potential.

I do have the items fairly self-contained and organized into smaller containers and boxes, but it still can be distracting to me...um, I mean the students. :)

So I cover it.

Which is a win-win!

Because now I have a place to display some math goodness.

In years past I covered it with butcher paper and made a timeline. I put a paper for each month and would add pictures of the things we did together.

(My classroom circe 2006)

The downside to this was that it wasn't too simple to lift and access the materials underneath.

It wasn't exactly hard to do, but if you are looking for a book on the fly it took longer than I would like.

So this year I use black posterboard and I now have small panels that lift easily.

I attached them by simply creating "hinges" out of tape.

At the bottom I added a number line. I took the number line I already had and cut it down to fit each board. I used a yardstick to help make it straight.

To make it fancy, I hotglued ribbon along the top of the number line.

And finished it off by covering the tape at the top with more hotglued ribbon.