Revenge of the Pronged Folders

I absolutely adore the back to school season and all of the excitement and promise that August and the hope of a new school year bring. To me, the back to school season is truly what Edward Pola and George Wyle had in mind when they wrote "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." I love the smell of a fresh pack of Crayola crayons and I love that I can smell the newness on each page in a never before written in notebook as I fan the pages. I love the feeling of cracking open a new binder and writing with a freshly sharpened pencil. Seeing aisles upon aisles spilling over with pencils and erasers, notebooks and folders, and crayons and lunch boxes gives me such a thrill that I'd almost rather not speak of because it's just so nerdy. 

Despite the exquisiteness of new school supplies and the promise of a fresh start, I get major FOMO (fear of missing out) during the back to school season. In fact, I had my first major FOMO episode several nights ago, when I had the most blood-chilling nightmare about pronged folders. It was the kind of nightmare that you wake up from in the middle of the night, drenched in a cold sweat. 

I was perusing the back to school section at Target, hunting for the ever elusive plastic pronged folders (in my classroom colors, of course) to use as my students' daily take home folders. Abandoning one aisle overflowing with cheap paper folders (with no prongs) for the next, as I walked around the back to school section, I slowly came to the horrible realization that, sadly, no more folder options existed. 

Woe is me! No plastic folders to withstand tears from eager kindergarteners shoving their daily folders into their book bags (and getting caught in zippers!) in order to devour their teddy grahams before catching their afternoon bus! Alas, no pronged folders to hold daily behavior calendars and helpful homework anchor charts! As I made my way, rather tearfully, back to the cheap, non-pronged paper folder aisle, only a handful of folders in mismatched colors remained, none of which that were in either red or green. Cue the hair-pulling, blood-curdling scream that ends in me waking up at 2 o'clock in the morning, with my heart racing and drenched in sweat.

Today; however, I am happy to report that I have conquered my folder FOMO and have finally extracted my revenge upon the ever elusive pronged folder! I bought 25 of these durable plastic green pronged beauties at Target for 50 cents a piece.

I'm thinking about switching my green folder bin out for a red one with a green apple label, as I had originally envisioned candy apple red folders for my class. 

Having been hired mid-year during the last school year, I learned a few valuable lessons about daily take home folders:

1. Obviously, folders are essential in the primary grades. They serve as the main form of daily communication between the teacher and the parents. Daily behavior calendars, homework assignments, helpful homework anchor charts, and important notes use these folders to travel back and forth between home and school. And since folders are essential...
2. Invest in plastic folders over paper folders. Plastic folders don't tear and won't get ratty throughout the school year. Although they are a few cents more expensive than paper folders, they last much longer and look much better!
3. Choose pronged folders over folders without prongs for quick and easy organization. Hole punch behavior calendars, homework calendars, and helpful homework anchor charts and hook them through the prongs in the middle of the folder. This ensures that essential day-to-day documents cannot accidentally be taken from the folder and thrown out; instead, this information remains in an easily accessible place. Once again, pronged folders will cost a few more cents than their non-pronged counterparts, but it is well worth the investment. 
4. Speaking of cost, folders are about as cheap as dirt during the back to school season. During the school year, this is not the case; heed my warning and stock up now! Walmart currently has paper folders, which are good for short-term use (such as with phonics journals at the beginning of kindergarten - I'll blog about these later), on sale for 15 cents a piece! As I mentioned above, I bought durable plastic pronged folders for 50 cents a piece at Target. 
5. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having an organized and easy-to-use daily folder system. You must really think through what you send home, when you send it home, how you send it home, and where (in the folder) you send it home. 

I am working on writing another post about the folder system I plan on using this school year. In the meantime, I am going to start writing R.L. Stine about an idea for a new Goosebumps book... ;)