Crate Seats

Using one of our favorite tools, Pinterest, Carrie found instructions on how to make crate seats for each child.  We made crates for each child and they will be able to use the crates anywhere in the room.  The crates also create a storage space for all of their individual Personalized Learning materials.  We were able to make 72 crates in one fun-filled Friday.  I think after hearing our plans to use power tools our principal was a little concerned for our safety and let us borrow a staple gun which made the process much faster.  The above link was what we based our idea on, but the following is how we made our seats.

We planned to make enough crates in case of high classroom numbers and it ended up being a good plan because we have a lot more children this year.  If following the link above, she made 8 crates for her classroom.  I am not going to lie, we did not take the cheap route in redesigning our classrooms!  So we each planned to make 24 crates, here are the supplies we needed:

-24 crates
-6 yards of fabric
-15-30 yards of ribbon, depending on different ways to make the handle
-5 foam mattress toppers (we used 5 altogether, so that was for 72 crates)
-Wood cut into pieces based on the measurements of your crates
-Staple Gun

If you are the type of person that likes precise directions and measurements, this is not the how-to for you :)  We measured the top of the crates and used that measurement to cut the wood boards.  Once that was done we then used the wood boards to measure our foam pieces.  We used a marker to trace the wood boards and were able to get 15 foam squares out of each mattress topper.  For the fabric we laid it on the floor, then put the foam and wood on top of it.  That's how we measured how much fabric was needed.  Tiff went above and beyond and also bought plastic shower curtains as a protective cover over her seats.  Once we had all of our pieces we put our handy-woman skills to the test and used a staple gun to secure the fabric and foam to the boards.  We finished each seat by adding a piece of ribbon either across the top, or as a loop on the sides so the children could lift the seat off of their crate.

  I know this how-to will not will any awards and my grandma, who taught me how to quilt, would be appalled at my measuring techniques.  However, it got the job done and our crates look fantastic!  To see more pictures of our finished crates check our our classroom environments post.