What size white Board?

[hands-on-mama]

We are renovating our school room. I want a good size white board to go on our biggest wall. My girls love to play school and it would be great for group work. What size do you like? The wall is pretty long, so we can probably fit a pretty big one.

[Lori D.]

Well, you could make your own whiteboard out of a 4'x8' piece of shower board from Home Depot or Loewe's, and have them cut it to any size you want. :) This website has tips on cleaning and edging the shower board inexpensively. This website suggests using self-adhesive Opti-Rite Lite to either cover an existing shower board used as a whiteboard and won't clean properly, or use it in lieu of shower board.

[FawnsFunnyFarm]

I agree, shower board is the way to go, I clean mine with rubbing alcohol when it needs it. I had mine cut into 2-2x4 pieces, one is on the wall and one is slid under the sofa for the kids to lay on the floor to draw on, something they love!. Then I have 4 pieces that are 2x2, the kids lug these around the house for random doodling.

 

If we were a classroom type of family, I would probably put a whole 4x8 sheet up there.

[almondbutterandjelly]

As large as possible.  I agree with the white tile board from Lowe's or Home Depot.  I have two, full size, that my wonderful husband put on sliding tracks.  Awesome!!!

[wintermom]

The largest size you can get that is also magnetic.  The functionality of the white board goes way up if you can also use it with magnets, I've found over the years.

[foxbridgeacademy]

My white board is 3x4 and I would LOVE a 4x8. So bigger id definitely better. 

[Momto4inSoCal]

I have a pretty big one (guessing 4x6) and I am taking it off to paint the wall with whiteboard paint so... pretty big :) I use ours all the time and run out of room quite often. 

[Jackie]

I agree with magnetic being a huge bonus. We've regularly used that feature.

 

We have two 3x2 boards, and that works well for us.

[AmyontheFarm]

I found a glass outdoor table top at the side of the road.  Neighbors bought a new patio set.  Hubby brought it home, I spend $12 in hardware and hmm maybe $6 in white shelf liner.  I applied the shelf liner carefully onto the back of the glass and this gave me a "white" surface instead of the color of my classroom walls.  Then hubby hung it up.  It is huge!  Cleans beautifully and goes nicely in my classroom. 

[alicai]

Magnetic is huge for us. I used a 2x3 for the initial years but once I was schooling 2 kids at once, we ran out of room. I can't recall what we have now, but I think it's a 4x4. It's enough. I would't mind it being a little bigger but I didn't want a humongous one.

[RosieCotton]

We have 3 of the 4 x 8 boards from Home Depot mentioned above. Super awesome to have that much space to leave things up for a week down two on the sides (Latin/French vocab, states/caps and their facts, even multiplication facts for memory work are posted down the sides for reviewing).

 

Wish they were magnetic but cant beat the price for this size. We have a 2 x 3 magnetic board on the floor they can sit at for spelling work with the tiles.

 

It can be a problem getting the marks off when left too long so ya know, and the linked post above gave me a few new things to try on it, as the EXPO cleaner just doesn't get the job done. I'm off to try rubbing alcohol right now!

[Mrs. Darinski]

Not to hijack, but we've also discovered another alternative I'm sure everyone but me knew about.  We have two whiteboards.  One is a small lap-size and the other slightly larger.  When considering getting another one, I was talking about this with a friend and she suggested using plain old ordinary everyday white board markers on your windows!  Well, hot dog!!  I had no idea this was even possible.  I had heard of those Crayola Window Writers, but knew nothing about the possibility of using white board markers.  I tried it and it worked!!  The white board markers wipe off the windows really easily and we've increased our useable working space without spending any money!  We already had the windows and the markers, and now we have fun doing artwork, writing messages, etc on our living room windows.  :)  Hopefully this may be of some use to someone else!  :)

[Doodlebug]

I've used shower board for years, transporting it for co ops.  

 

It does the job.  But I generally have to replace shower board every 2-3 years.  (And that's when I'm at my absolute wits end because NOTHING will erase without spray cleaner and paper towels/rags).  Over time they become harder to dry erase.  And I've tried every cleaning/rejuvenation trick on pinterest with limited results.  

 

But for a stationary home board, magnetic white board would be my choice... even if I had to get a slightly smaller board to remain on budget.  

 

The magnetic feature is nice, but they're just so darned nice to write on!  And they seem so easy to thoroughly erase with a dry erase sponge without using 409 or a magic eraser.  So, magnetic board gets my vote!