Friday

Magnetic Attendance / Chores Chart Tutorial



I have a very easy craft to share with you today.


          It is a simple tutorial for making a

 Magnetic Attendance Board 

for your Sunday School class or a small Children's Church. 




Of course it could be made for several other things for your own kids at home eg.


Chores Chart
Reading Practice Chart
Homework Chart



It is quite easy to make and is designed to be reused 
or adapted later for other uses.





Today is definitely a FUNWORK Post for me but did help me clear an item out of my kitchen so I think I can claim that a tiny bit of decluttering was involved too.



The Materials Required:




  • Ruler
  • Scissors
  • Coloured string or ribbon
  • Small round sticky backed magnets
  • Sticky backed magnetic strip (which I already had cut into pieces from an previous time)
  • Liquid Chalk Pen (or you can use ordinary chalk)
  • Blackboard paint (I had only about a fifth of this small tin left from a previous time and didn't even use all of that)
  • Paint brush

And 

      An old baking tray or cookie sheet.




As you can see my baking tray was scratched and stained and I had 3 newer ones and was about to throw this one out so it was just good timing.


Why not upcycle instead of throwing it out!


I had seen various ideas around reusing cookie sheets recently & thought I could try something easy and I needed a new idea for attendance for the Sunday School Class from New Year to Easter so this was my idea.




First I made sure the baking tray was clean and then enlisted the help of my husband and his drill.
Now this part was easy and I could have done it myself if he would let me but he does practically all that kind of work in the house so I was happy to let him do this for me.

Using quite a narrow drill piece he bored two holes in the tray in what was to be the top two corners so that the tray would hang horizontally (so the two corners along a long side)




He then informed me that something else had to be done before he would give me back my tray.

He explained that drilling the holes would leave rough edges on the back of the tray and I could clearly see what he meant.

But he had a very simple solution for making them smooth again.




You simply get a wider drill bit and use that on the back of the tray.

So as well as taking a picture of this part I also took this short video while he was doing it.




It definitely made a good difference to the edge of the holes and will not scratch anything it touches.





Next step was to get the old newspaper down on the table and start painting the tray with the blackboard paint.




Easy job.  I'm not that great at making a smooth finish but it was fine except that it seemed to be drying quickly while I painted.





I painted the main section and the trim around the front but I did not bother to paint the back as it was not going to be seen.





I let it dry for a while and then put on 13 of the round magnets to see about spacing as there will be 13 weeks between New Year and Easter.

Plenty of room across the tray for the weeks.





Then I tried the rectangular magnets and I would need around 10 of these so wanted to check that spacing as well down the left hand side.




However when I removed the magnets it was obvious that I hadn't waited long enough to let it dry completely and small marks were left from the paint coming off.

This meant a second coat of paint and waiting long enough for this one to be completely dry before the next step.




I used the ruler and the liquid chalk pen to draw a line down leaving enough space for the length of the rectangular magnets at the left and wrote the heading of "NAME" 





Next I wrote the heading of "ATTENDANCE"

Then I threaded the end of my coloured string through the hole at the left hand side from back through to the front and tied a double knot which would be thick enough not to pull back through the hole.




I measured & cut off enough of the string to be able to hang the board up and tie a knot at the other end and my board was completed.

Now for the names.




I got out my labeller that I have had for so many years that I have forgotten how long and chose black lettering on a blue background for the boys and black lettering on a red background for the girls.

Then I stripped off the paper from the sticky side of the magnet and stuck the name on in its place on each magnet.

The names can also simple be written on thin card and stuck to the sticky part of the magnets.





I trimmed off the edges of the magnets so that the names looked nicer and then they were ready to be placed on the board.




The names were spaced out nicely on the board and it was ready to go to church with a small container of the small round magnets.


This is the finished product 



It has been used for 2 weeks now in the Sunday School Class 
and I am rather pleased with it.