Bright Ideas Blog Hop ~ Shower Curtain Rings and PVC.

I'm coming to you today with the Bright Ideas Blog Hop:

My idea today is for quick, inexpensive chart stands. In my classroom I had exactly 1 chart stand. There were no extra ones in our building or in the district's warehouse, so I looked into buying one. Wow, talk about pricey! Well my husband makes his own target stands out of wood and sometimes pvc, so I asked him if he could come up with chart stands too. My needs were simple - light-weight, easy to move around, able to be put on a table or floor. He ended up making them out of pvc since it was the simplest, most cost effective option that didn't need a whole lot of tools.

He used four t-joints per frame, and two elbow joints. He cut the pvc with a hack saw. I had previously bought 2 different sizes of pocket charts at the Target Dollar Spot, so he made the charts to fit those sizes. Of course it could be made bigger or smaller, depending on your own chart size. Coincidentally, we had just switched out our shower curtains and I had saved the old rings "just in case" (teachers never throw anything away, right?). Well they are perfect for holding up the charts! If you don't have shower curtain hooks on hand a simple s-type hook from a hardware store would work too.

Here's my first stand, just plain pvc. He made me three stands for less than $20 and I immediately took them to school and started using them. Then my husband said he could spray paint them, to make them look nicer. I loved the idea, but I already had them in my classroom, so I told him it was no big deal and we'd get to it whenever, I was just happy to have the chart stands as they were. That week, the week before Valentine's Day, we had an evening program at school. As we were leaving my husband grabbed the stands out of my room, told me he could spray paint them that weekend and they'd be ready to go Monday morning. I didn't think anything of it, until on Valentine's Day, I walked into our hotel room and saw this:

 How sweet is my man?!

Here's one of the stands in action, post-spray panting. It's the perfect size to fit on my table and when centers are over, the feet get turned sideways and it leans against the wall behind my big chart stand. Its light-weight enough that the kids can carry it to the table and set it up, but with the feet its sturdy enough that it sits securely on the table and we never had one fall off.


Well there's my idea for shower curtain rings and pvc, so now go find some more Bright Ideas at this month's hop!

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