Submitted by Nancy Perry, Ohio

Idea posted September 3, 2004

At the end of the year last June, my principal informed all of us that we should be ready to plaster the walls near our rooms with positive and goal-oriented things. I am in the process of making a Brag Bag. This is a long piece of felt (red for my school color) which will hang on a dowel rod attached to a wire hanger. It will be divided into several pockets. The top pocket will have a 1"-2" card across the top that says BRAG BAG. Then there will be 8.5" X 11" and 4.25" X 5.5" pockets. I plan to take digital pictures of kids doing things well in class, print them off, and put them into the pockets. The pockets are covered with laminating film and can be hot-glued to the felt. However, if you cover the laminating film with tissue paper, you can actually sew the pockets onto the felt with a sewing machine. (i.e., if sewn, the pocket layers are: felt on the bottom, laminating film, and then the tissue paper.) The BRAG BAG result is like the word pocket charts that the classroom teachers have except with custom-sized pockets.