Carpet Time!

Every summer I try to work on one pet peeve that I have in my classroom.  So, last summer I decided to work on creating a more productive carpet time in my room.  Carpet time is that time when I bring my students up to do their jobs.  My kids are not really aware, but while they are doing their jobs they are learning graphing, place value, problem solving, vocabulary, time, money, patterns, etc.  My problem, however, was how do I make everyone accountable for that learning and not just the student with the job.  The kids that didn't have jobs were fussing about who was touching who or who was not in the right spot.  I started searching online for a carpet that had grids or circles or some way that the students could have their own real estate, but these carpets were out of sight especially since the money would come out of my pocket!  Then I found this blue carpet at Walmart, which measures 9 x 12 ft.  To make the grid, I got two 2 x 4's  (to make straight lines) and red craft paint and just painted the lines after I measured and marked them with a little masking tape.  I also used a little carpet tape to hold it down securely on the open end opposite the wall.  So far it has worked beautifully.