Bottle Cap Numbers

About 1.5 ago, I found a great idea on a blog by Jill called Controlling My Chaos.   Jill uses flat glass marbles with student numbers on them for her students to make their lunch choices.  It's also an easy way to see which students are not present.  She has everything drawn out on a nice-sized white board.  While I absolutely love Jill's idea, I couldn't find opaque flat glass marbles anywhere!  And, because of my need for instant gratification, there was no way I was going to order them.

Instead, while helping one of my fellow 5th grade teachers clean up her room (she was so kind to give me a corner of her room all year), I saw that she had Cheerwine glass bottle caps with magnets glued to the back.  Brilliant!  I would have loved to drink 30 glass Cheerwines, but I can't afford it ($ or weight gain), so, yesterday, I went to Hobby Lobby to see if they had anything similar.  Guess what?  If you go to their scrapbooking area, you can probably find anything under the sun that you might need.  I found a pack of 30 colored bottle caps (and they were 50% off)!!  While I was at Hobby Lobby, I also bought a pack of 50 round magnets (#6 on a strength scale of 1-10) and I bought some Loctite craft glue.  I couldn't wait to get home and try all this stuff out!!

A word of advice: be frugal with the glue!!  Since the glue directions said to let it become tacky before putting two pieces together, I decided to lay out all of the caps and magnets and put glue on them.  Another word of advice: give yourself plenty of space!!!  I put way too much glue on the caps and magnets (complete mess!!!!) and had the pieces too close together.  Once I put the caps and magnets together, they became super magnets. You wouldn't believe how many sets I had to pull apart!  Aggravating!!  With that said, I was so happy with the outcome that I would do it all over again.  Take a look:

Today, I needed to go back to Hobby Lobby for scrapbook paper (another project to come), and decided that I couldn't wait until Monday to go to school and find my silver Sharpie, so I decided to buy a Sharpie Paint Marker (oil based) instead.  I didn't get the pack that you see in the picture.  They had singles which were $3.49 each (!!!), but thankfully I had a 40% off coupon.  I bought the marker so I could write the student numbers on the bottle caps.  I was really hesitant to get the Sharpie Paint Marker because it was oil based.  I wasn't sure how it would do on the metal caps, and I didn't want to completely ruin my bottle caps, BUT the display said the markers were great on metal.  I must say, I am super excited with how they turned out!  Check out the picture below:

You may notice that I did not put numbers on the pink bottle caps.  I knew if a boy got a pink cap, he'd probably have a cow.  I'm not sure what I'll use the pink caps for.  Next year, I shouldn't have more than 25 students, but I may save them just incase something crazy happens and I need them.  I haven't quite decided where I am going to have my lunch count/attendance set up.  I don't have unlimited white board space.  Our back doors are black metal doors, so I'm thinking I could find some way to write the lunch choices on the door?  Maybe the neon expo markers?  I'll have to do some research.

What do y'all think??

*Update* Has anyone every used the Expo Bright Sticks?  They're apparently like chalk markers...