A Peek Inside My Mail Bags

Hi everyone! First of all I can’t believe this is my first blog post in over a year! My mat leave flew by, but I’m looking forward to being back at work in August!

Speaking of being back at work, I recently posted to my Instagram stories about how I was starting to prepare my mail bags for this year.. and you guys had all the questions! So I’m going to answer most of them here and I have some free downloads for you as well!

We use these mail bags to send any important papers home (classroom notices, papers from the office etc.) We have our communication folders in there year round (more on that in a bit) and eventually our poetry books (which has our weekly shared reading poems) go in there every Friday as well. So it needs to be big enough to hold a file folder and a duotang.

In the past I used the Dollarama courier bags but this year I found the quality to be so bad.. most of the ones I saw in the store looked like they were already falling apart! But then I popped in to my local independent dollar store and found these clear poly zip folders that seemed much sturdier so I snatched them up! Dollarama has similar ones but again the quality seemed way worse.. so I’m hoping these hold up! I paid $1.75 each for them.

UPDATE: So I had originally grabbed 10 of these and then the owner of the dollar store said he could order me 20 more… well they didn’t end up coming in in time for the September so I ended up going back to the Dollarama courier bags. The second time I looked they actually looked to be better quality again and they ended up holding up the entire year like usual! If you are looking for a cheaper alternative I know lots of teachers also use XL freezer bags instead too!

If you want my EDITABLE mail bag label shown above (it also comes in black & white and in a photo version) you can click here or on the image below:

In the photo above you see the mail bag placed on top of a box. That’s what we keep our mail bags in. Each student gets a hanging file and after I check for notes every morning their mail bags go in there. This makes it easy to store notices for students who are away!

I use this file box from Staples and these hanging files (also from Staples). And I use these tabs and write their names so I can easily find their spot. I write them in attendance order, JK’s then SK’s. I also make a file for extra copies.

On the cover, we include our school name, school address, teachers name(s), classroom number, school phone number and what time to call by to report absences (this is ideally) and school hours.

I used fake information (except our names, those are real) just for confidentiality sake.. so no, I don’t work at John Lennon Public School and don’t call that number! 😝

On the left side in the inside we staple the classroom calendar/newsletter.

The back has that month’s newsletter. I took a picture but afterwards a couple of you guys pointed out my typos and I didn’t want to retake all the pictures.. so I removed that one but you can see what my newsletters look like in the picture below:

If you want my editable calendar & newsletter templates you can click here or on the image below:

And on the right side we staple the communication log.

On the back we include our important dates (holidays, PA days and information about our class schedule).

We glue the paper for the front and back on the file folder and laminate. Then we cut them out and staple on the calendar/newsletter and the communication log. When it’s time to add a new calendar/newsletter or communication log, we just staple it on top! I always leave extra copies of the communication log in one of the hanging files in my mail bag box.

You can download an editable communication folder PowerPoint file for free!

Click here or on the image below to grab your copy!

If you want the file to format correctly and/or you want to use the same fonts as me, you will need to download KG Primary Penmanship (free for personal use), install them on your computer and then restart your computer before opening the file:

I hope that was helpful! I hope you are having an awesome summer!

– Yukari