Happy Shopping!

We are so happy to finally buy the items on our wish list! Have fun!

PROMO CODE BTS13

Working on your wish list?

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Did you hear that it is almost sale time? Sunday and Monday are the days to shop. Here are some of our favorite items. One of our goals this summer was to create packets that are a years worth of activities in a subject area. We took some of the areas that maybe got pushed aside when things got too busy. The items below are print and go and be set for the entire year!

200 Daily Questions. You are set for the entire year!

Each month has activities for each week day the parents can reinforce at home. Print pages 2 sided and you only send home 1 piece of paper!

 35 popular stories to discuss setting, characters, order of events and prediction every single week.

We have bundled our popular literacy and calendar journals. Due to their size they are broken down into 3 bundles.

It is finally here! TpT Sale!

Can we get a Whoop Whoop? We love a good sale! This year the  TpT Back to School Sale will run Sunday - Monday. Our store is 20% off plus use the code below for an additional discount from TpT. This means you will get 28% off our store!! Go ahead and start adding to your wish list!

PROMO CODE BTS13

Dollar Store Finds

This is the time of year that we are all running from store to store trying to find those awesome items our little ones will love! Or the many trips to the dollar store to find those inexpensive items for those great projects.  Well, have you ever searched the school aisle at Dollar General? I will admit, Dollar Tree has been my go-to store the past couple of years. I didn't even realize Dollar General had a $1 line of teacher items. I am going to highlight some of our favorite items shared with us this week. The Learn Motivate Reward line of ArtSkills (www.artskills.com) is available exclusively at Dollar General (www.dollargeneral.com) all for only $1 each.

What teacher doesn't love foam shapes? These foam shapes are 50ish pieces for $1. They come in numbers, circles and letters. The numbers and letters are great for center work. The circles make great counters.

This year I really wanted to incorporate some fine motor skills into the beginning of school time. I think lacing is a great way to do this. This item is 7 lacing cards for $1. Great deal!

 I love these classroom posters. They are not too big and also not too small where no one can see it from across the room. There is a cute cat clock poster. It can be whole group and then put into a center. I think adding some time flash cards and the students can move the hands to match the times on the cards. The I Spy Spinner is one of my favorites. We always play I Spy but this variation on it allows you to spin in order to pick a color. Love it! Dry Erase Shapes are great for those areas where content changes.

 Puzzles! Need a I say more? I love small puzzles for center areas. 

 I saved the best for last! STICKERS! I love stickers. I have always loved stickers. Did you have a sticker book when you were a kid? The shiny pages that made the stickers "movable". I don't remember them being that "movable" but I loved my sticker book anyway. I love stickers! The kids love stickers! Win-Win! My students have always been motivated by stickers and I had already been thinking of ways to incorporate more into my day.

Here is one idea. Do you use journals or notebooks in your classroom? I do! I have journals for math, science and work work. One of the things I struggle with is getting and keeping the kids on the right page. In a perfect world we will start at the first page and continue, without skipping pages, through the year. Well, the world is not perfect! So my thought was putting a small sticker on the page the students will be recording on at that time. I always discuss, model and walk around pointing to where I want them to be but it never fails, they somehow changes pages when I turn my back. Am I the only one that happens to? I am going to try placing a small sticker on the page as a visual reference as we work on that particular prompt. Some of these $1 packets have 400 stickers each. That really is a great deal!

The products above don't even begin to show you what Dollar General has to offer. We couldn't show you everything but wanted to spotlight some of our favorites! The Learn Motivate Reward line of ArtSkills (www.artskills.com) is available exclusively at Dollar General (www.dollargeneral.com). 

Teachers Notebook Sale

Our store is also 20% off this entire week! Happy Shopping!

(Picture will take you to TN. Sentence above will take you directly to our store!)

Almost Sale Time

We know some of you are already back to school and some of you, like us, have a few precious days left until returning. We wanted to spend the next couple of weeks highlighting some of our favorite products as we all count down the days until Back to School sale time at TpT and TN.

Our first one is Tamara's most favorite. It was definitely a labor of love because it was not an easy packet to make. What drove us to finish was that our team needed it BAD. Our district has 18 word families we work on every year. Our team always has 4 worksheets to help practice the family for that week. Tamara is a big proponent of cutting down on the amount of paper used. So we combined the activities we already do into a nice half sheet page booklet. Students can work on one page a day and send home at the end of the week.

We truly are in love and can't wait to start using it this year with our babies! So, click on the picture below to go to our TpT store to buy now or save to your wish list and buy once the sales start!

Click here for Teachers Notebook link

Shopping this Summer

One of my frustrations this summer was the lack of "teacher" stuff in the Target Dollar Spot. There are 2 things I really, really, really wanted to get for my classroom this summer. One was plastic book bins. The other was plastic baskets to put inside my student desks.

I bought a lot of books from a retired teacher and needed more book bins to put them in. I used some larger tubs last year but the kids just piled them in and they looked horrible. I have to admit, I am a bargain shopper and sometimes that makes the process a little crazy. I will drive to 5 million stores just to save money. I know that I probably wasted the amount saved on gas but shhhh! :)

As for the baskets for the desks. I know that the majority of you prefer tables but I am really a desk lover. I have done it both ways. I found that the students having their own space outweighs the craziness of the desks moving. I know these babies need to talk and interact with each other and that is why the desks are grouped together just as they were when the kids sat at tables. I have 4-5 students in each group.

My big frustration last year was my kids didn't like to return the supplies inside their bag or box. They would just throw them inside the desk. Not only would it be messy but it would take them forever to find something. These new nifty baskets will hold all their "small stuff". This will be their bag/box, name tag, sight word rings, space bar and anything else that won't stack nicely on the other side.

I really wanted to find the best deal because, ideally, I needed at least 20 book bins and 20 baskets. That is quite an investment but I think it is worth it. I was super excited to read about a company called Steps to Literacy. They have some really great prices. Not only did I find what I wanted but their prices were unbeatable. They have a free shipping code so it made the deal even sweeter!

Here are my goodies that arrived today:

 So, please stop by Steps to Literacy and check them out. Click on any of the above pictures to be directed to their site.  (BTW, this is not a sponsored post, just a post by someone who loves their products.)

31 days of Giveaways

Educents is having an amazing Back to School Giveaway starting today!  For the entire month of August they will be giving away a total of $35,000 worth of products.  Yes, you read that right, $35,000! 

Here's an exclusive sneak peak of the first 10 days of giveaways:

              


There are multiple ways to enter and win! There will be daily giveaway winners, one grand prize winner, and two runner ups.

Here's how it works:
Enter each daily giveaway for your chance to win the daily prize.
Enter the day of each daily giveaway to be entered in the Grand Prize Giveaway.
Share the giveaway on Facebook to increase the Grand Prize to $1000.  That's a $1000 shopping spree on Educents.com!

Link to Educents is at the top of our blog! Don't miss out on all these goodies!!