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This year, I’m at a new school. With that new school comes a new classroom and new classroom layouts. For my new school, I am using sit spots, but I needed them to have numbers on them. Here’s how to add numbers to sit spots with vinyl.
At my previous school, I had rugs with dots on them, which I loved. Everyone had a dot that was their dots. They hard colors in rows, so I could have students come up in rows (the blue row, please line up, etc).
My new school has carpet in the music room, which is helpful for sound, but it means that I don’t have a rug. I wanted to be able to have rows, but I also wanted to add numbers so that I can assign each student a number. This means I can have classroom jobs, do random classroom pickers, and more– things I couldn’t do before with my 600 students.
So I decided on Sit Spots.
What are Sit Spots?
Sit Spots are velcro dots that stick to the carpet to mark where students sit. They come in a few color options, including ones with numbers.
I purchased mine from Amazon.
But… the colors in the numbered dots were random. I want rows.
So here’s my teacher DIY– adding numbers to sit spots with iron on vinyl.
Materials:
- Sit Spots
- 12×12 Heat transfer vinyl
- Iron or Cricut Heat Press (I use iron)
- Folded towel or Cricut heat press mat
- Cricut or other cutting tool (I have this one)
- Cricut mat (I used green)
- Parchment paper
- Modge Podge (I used matte)
How to add numbers to Sit Spots
- First, use the Cricut Design Space to create the numbers you need. I made mine about 2×2.5 inches, but they could have been bigger and still fit. I did numbers 1-30 and only used one 12×12 piece of vinyl.
- Then, put the heat transfer vinyl onto the cutting mat, shiny side down.
- Load the cutting mat into the machine, press make it, and get to cutting. Note: MAKE SURE YOU MIRROR THE IMAGE.
- After the machine is done cutting, pull the excess vinyl off of the mat and weed the inside of the numbers.
- Take the numbers off the mat and cut the numbers so they are individual.
- Set your iron to cotton. Make sure there is no steam.
- Use a folded towel or the Cricut heat press mat. Set the Sit Spots on in. Then add the numbers. Then put parchment paper on top.
- Hold iron for about 30 seconds, then release. The plastic should pop right off of the Sit Spot.
- At this point, it may be curled up on the sides. Don’t freak out. Just set it down and add something flat on it for 30 seconds while it cools.
- Apply to your carpet — I just put the Sit Spots on ground and stepped on them to adhere.
- Then, add mod podge to the numbers to help seal them so that the students don’t pull them up.
Classroom Management with Sit Spots
When you introduce the kids to the Sit Spots, make a BIG DEAL about how the kids should not be touching them. I made a huge fuss about it, as well as told them the reason behind it– we don’t want to mess them up, because then you’ll have no where to sit.
In addition, I told them that if I THINK they are touching them, they will get a yellow card.
There you go!
Now, I’ve only had one class in my room so far, so I can’t talk about the durability of these yet, but I have been drilling it into the students that they DON’T TOUCH THEM. I’m sure they won’t last if you’re picking at them.
Happy DIY-ing!
Becca
