Sometimes the best classroom resources begin with an unexpected problem.
It started with a simple request.
Debbie (my wife and Pre-K teacher extraordinaire) needed two new classroom job cards for her Pre-K classroom…Recess Helper and Teacher Helper. We already had a collection, so I figured I'd open the original file, add the two jobs, and be finished in a few minutes.
Or so I thought.
Over the years, I'd moved from Adobe InDesign to Affinity and transferred countless files from an external SSD to Google Drive.
Somewhere along the way, several of the original illustrations had disappeared. The job cards were still there. Some of the artwork was no longer linked. I could have spent hours hunting down the missing images, but we had another idea.
Why not start fresh?
Over the past several months, we've been developing our own cast of illustrated children, the Bridge Early Learning Kids, to use throughout our classroom resources.
This seemed like the perfect opportunity to put them to work.
So, instead of creating two new cards, we began rebuilding the entire collection.
One job led to another. Our Bridge Kids became bell ringers, librarians, line leaders, classroom helpers, and more.
And, frankly, I liked them a lot better than the old set pictured above.
Before long, what began as a quick update had turned into a completely refreshed collection of classroom job cards.
And that got us thinking.
If we needed these in Debbie's classroom, perhaps other teachers could use them, too.
So we decided to share the collection through Bridge Early Learning.
Our new Classroom Job Cards & Clipart resource includes 26 ready-to-print classroom job cards along with the individual illustrations in clipart format, so teachers can create additional cards to meet the needs of their own classrooms.
After all, every classroom works a little differently.
What started as two missing classroom jobs became something much more useful.
Have a classroom job you think should be in the collection? We'd love to hear about it - drop it in the comments below!
Made for our classroom. Shared with yours.
What started as two new classroom jobs turned into an entirely new collection of classroom job cards and illustrations.
We'd love to share the complete collection with you.
Join the Bridge Early Learning community, and you'll receive access to this resource, along with occasional classroom ideas, new resources, and invitations to share what's working in your own classroom.
No weekly sales pitches. Just good ideas worth passing along.
Join us and get the complete collection.
The download is a zip file containing a PDF file with the cards we use and a Bridge Early Learning Classroom Jobs clipart folder with the files you can use to create your own classroom job cards.
If you do create your own cards…send me a picture and we can add it to teh blog. rick@bridgeearlylearning.com