Something I just love to do is go drooling at "teacher stores" with my good friend, Veronica. She is in education too, and we've made it a normal thing to do to go find all the greatest deals on "stuff" for our classrooms and teaching.
Well, this summer...Veronica introduced me to a store in Strongsville. United Art & Education. (It really should be called "United EDUCATION & Art" - because it was about 90% education materials and 10% artist materials). It's about an hour away from me...but if I go to her place in Medina first and we do lunch and the Strongsville Mall (hey, what lady doesn't like to go to a good mall now and again?!), that hour away quickly seems like no time at all. I hit the jackpot with my first trip to this new-found teacher haven! It's been a longstanding joke in my center that my classroom is full of "ROCKSTARS," so this year I decided (on a whim at UA&E) that I was going to do a classroom-wide rockstar theme. I found the coolest rockstar-esque bullentin board border that I will use for my parent welcome board, among other things. And UA&E had rockstar themed name tags - cha-ching! I'll laminate those babies, use a Sharpie to write my kiddos' names on them, and label their cubbies - the best part - when I have students leave and/or enter my room, I can easily erase and replace names. (Yes, I said erase Sharpie - Mr. Clean (or other off-brand) Magic Erasers are AMAZING!) This will make cubby labelling so much easier as the year goes on!!
I've also devoted this summer to bettering my resource library. This is where Mailbox comes in. I've been debating the last couple of school years if I want to subscribe to the Mailbox Magazine, or just borrow current issues from the library...well, I decided on the latter. I may change my mind this year...we'll see. It isn't expensive, it's just something I never got serious about subscribing to - although I do love the great ideas I have gotten from each magazine I've used... I decided to look around on the Mailbox website this summer during my time off work and found a great, free resource! And it is SO easy! I literally signed up and started receiving e-mails about free ideas for activities, classroom management, worksheets (which I'm not normally a fan of, but I'll take a look anyhow - it's free, why not?), and all sorts of things. Plus, I have already ordered three alphabet resource books and got free shipping and $10.00 off my order since it was over $50.00...not a bad deal! I especially liked this deal because two of the three books were books I had been "drooling" over in my teacher store trips for the last two years - the third book was a book I didn't know about, but follows the same format as the other two...yay!
Scholastic OH MY! I've been building my children's book library since I began student teaching in college. But it has really grown since I joined Scholastic my first year of teaching (2007-2008 school year). I submit a few orders a year, and get free shipping on all of them because I spend $20.00 or more on each order - BUUUUUT that $20.00 usually covers an armful of children's books and occasionally teacher resource books. I already have books saved on a September order form!
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