Today I want to share some pictures that I meant to share with you LAST summer! 🙂 My sweet husband helped me make science lab coats for my first graders last summer and they had SO much fun with them all year! It made them feel like “real scientists” and you could see the excitement and seriousness in their little faces when we put them on for experiments throughout the year!
Step One: To start, I ordered several Large and a few X-L child sized t-shrits. You can find them all over the place with a quick google search. Custom Ink and Jiffy Shirts are two companies that sell shirts in bulk, but there are many!
Step Two: Sweetly ask your husband or another family member/friend for help! Haha this will make the process go much faster! Then, cut each shirt down the front so that your “t-shirt” is now a “lab coat!” 🙂
Step Three: We made a square pocket out of cardboard and cut angles on the bottom of the square to form a point. We used a sharpie to trace the pocket onto the left side of the shirt.
You can draw a straight, dotted line across the top of the pocket to give it a little detail!
Step Four: We used a penny as our “tracer” for our buttons! Easy-cheesy. We traced 5 buttons down the front of the lab coats. You can draw four little “holes” in the buttons with your sharpie for extra detail! 🙂
Ta-da! You now have some homemade lab coats for your little scientists! If you want, you can add some diagonal rectangles toward the bottom of the “coats” for extra pockets.
My students store their coats in their cubbies by hanging them on their hooks! When it’s science experiment time, they grab their coats and are ready to learn!
Here’s a picture of a happy little scientist in my classroom!
The best part? I simply collected the shirts at the end of the year and threw them into my washer. I folded them up and now they are ready to be passed out and used next year!
We only used them about twice a week, so they were all in very good condition still!
Don’t forget to make one for yourself! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by my blog today! I hope these pictures gave you a good idea of how we created our lab coats in case you want to implement these into your classroom this fall!
Adorable!! May I please in your class??
What a GREAT idea! Thanks for the step-by-step tutorial.
Alyce
Oh Christina! I am presenting at our county wide science conference on Thursday. Wearing one of these lab coats would be a perfect addition to my presentation! Then, I can share your post for interested people to check out how to make one. I might can make one as a door prize. Fun! Thanks again for sharing! My kinder cubs will love these for next year!
Super cute! I know my kids would love this! Thanks for always sharing such cute ideas!
Christa
sweetlifeofsecondgrade
So adorable! Thank you for sharing!!!
OMG! We are making these the first week! Thanks! wendy 1stgradefireworks
So cute! My 5th graders love wearing a costume over their uniform.
Beti
Holy Moly! Those are the cutest and easiest way to motivate students. My class will definitely have lab coats this year.