Chair Pockets

When I started teaching Kindergarten in a new school I went in early over the summer to meet some of the teachers who would be on my team. When I walked into T’s classroom, I saw she had chair pockets for each of her students’ chairs. In the chair pocket was the child’s journal and their bag of crayons. T explained that by each child keeping their crayons in a ziplock bag labeled with their name it avoided fights over crayon colors and the destruction of the crayon boxes that typically happens within the first millisecond of being touched. Also, not having to include transition time for looking for and finding journals and then returning back to their seat reduced transition time during the writing block or when children chose to write after finishing their center activities. The first thing I thought was, “YES! No more crayon boxes!” and the second thing I thought was “I must have these.”

T had actually paid a fair amount for hers and being the “frugal” person I am, I checked them out and thought – huh, I can make these. After all, I did get an A in middle school home ec. Long story short, by the time I bought the fabric, matching thread, and – wait for it – a sewing machine, I am not sure I saved any money. Fortunately, though, the chair pockets are actually pretty easy to make and basically only took about a day to make 30 or so.

To make a chair pocket you want to first make sure that your fabric is wide enough to cover the width of the chair plus about two/three inches. Depending on the length you want the chair pockets to be, I measured from the top of the chair to about six inches or from the floor and doubled it. This gave me enough material to cover the back of the chair and the “fold up” where the materials are stored. For my kid size chairs, the rectangle of material generally was about 16 inches wide and about 48 inches long.

The first thing is to hem the two edges. Lay the rectangle of fabric down. Take one short side and fold the hem up, then take the other short side and fold the hem down. Sew the hems. Now lay the fabric down again. Measure to the middle of the fabric on the long side and mark with a pin. Fold one side of the fabric to the middle and pin the edges (the hem should be facing up). Then turn the fabric over and fold the other side of the fabric to the middle and pin the edges (again the hem should be facing up). Run a line of pins down the outer edges to secure the fabric together. It should almost look like an “S” if you look at it sideways. Run the sewing machine down each edge. You have been sewing on the “wrong side” of the fabric. Now turn it right side out and you have a chair pocket! You may want to play with the length, width or format, so I always took a chair home with me to try it out right away so I didn’t have to wait until I went back to school to see if it worked.

As you can see in the picture, I am really into colors and my tables are color coded. The blue table has blue chair pockets, a blue table canister, blue matting under their name tag, and blue matting under their behavior chart. I even had blue pencils and blue erasers one year. It is pretty hard to forget which color table you sit at. When looking for fabrics, look for a pretty thick fabric that will hold together well. Since I wanted different colors for my fabric, I was a little more limited in my choice, but T’s are a thick fabric with a heavy weight as compared to mine that were more cottony. I generally have to replace mine about every two to three years, while T’s have lasted at least six. Finally, make sure you get a washable fabric as I take mine home about two times each year to spruce them up and erase the beautiful crayon marks that have somehow magically appeared. Isn’t that funny how that happens?