Three Days, Four Dollar Trees!

As all you teachers know, the Dollar Tree is a great place to shop for school.  Well, I've been to four different Dollar Trees since Thursday!  On that day, I took my kids to visit my parents.  My folks live an hour northwest of my home, so we met up at a Culver's halfway between.  We talked, laughed, ate hamburgers, waited out a rainstorm, and then the kids and I headed back home, except that we passed a Dollar Tree before we got very far, and since there was a GameStop in the strip mall, my sixteen-year-old son was interested in stopping too.

I knew I wanted to get some type of big container for my "tables" (four desks pushed together) of students to put their scraps in, so I headed straight to the plastic container department.  I had seen another blog (can't remember/find it) where the kids used them... BRILLIANT!  I'm always teaching to the last minute of the day, and sometimes there is just NO TIME to pick up our cutting scraps.  My first year in first grade, the young man who cleaned my classroom for the district actually complained to his supervisor about me.  (Apparently it's the teacher's responsibility to pick up anything too big for the vacuum cleaner.)  OOPS!

Anyway, back to the plastic container department at the Dollar Tree:  So many colors!  So many shapes!  So many sizes!  I stood there FOREVER!  Here is what I finally decided on:

One set per table for projects that require cutting!

I also found these (4 in a pack) for our Top Dog classroom:

One per student to jot down ideas for writing.

My district follows Columbia Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and they recommend a small notebook to jot down ideas for writing "small moments."  These will get passed out in October with a note to the parents explaining how I taught the students to use them.  They are kept in the students' guided reading bag that goes home every night.  That way, they go to and from school daily but can't fall out.  Putting them in folders did NOT work for me.

I got these three sets (8 per set) of cards, plus the set with the pug (that set is at school already).

I'm going to use them for birthday cards to my students.

I love dogs, which you may not have known, and the first dog my husband and I got as a married couple was a sweet puggy-wug named Peanut.  She was my baby!  She lived 13 glorious years.  Now we have two chihuahua rescue mutts.  What can I say?  My lap was cold without a dog, and the kids are WAY too big!  

Shammy and Trixie are VERY SMART!

Yes, I got more at the Dollar Tree!  You KNOW I did!  I also picked up four of these supply caddies for the "table" groups to share.

Why only four?  That's ALL I could find in this color! :(

If you have suggestions for how to use these for pencils, markers, crayons, glue sticks, etc., I'm all ears!  I was planning to label the students' supplies with their names and use this for storage, so kids aren't always digging in their desks.  See, at my school, one of the required school supplies EVERY YEAR is a clear plastic shoe box to keep art supplies neat in desks AND to carry art supplies to the art room once a week for instruction with our art teacher.  So usually the art box lid is UNDER the box, in the desk, and the kids can just lift the lid of the desk to reach in to grab what they need.  But there's a problem.  Some kids don't put things back in the box.  They just toss it into the desk.  I thought having a shared caddy out might prevent that.  Then when it's time for art, they will just pull their bag of crayons, colored pencils, markers, scissors, and glue stick out and put them in their clear shoe box to walk to art.  Does that sound silly?  It's only once a week, so I think it might be worth it.

For our school-wide theme of "Out of This World!" I found these, which have five of each shape in one package, which means 15 for $1.00.  You know what?  That deal is "Out of This World!"

Space-theme bulletin board decorations!

So, why did I visit four stores in three days?  Because when I got home with my "loot," I was showing my husband (yes, I know he won't be excited, but he loves me, so he looks and smiles), when I took the stack of six bowls apart and found that one of the bowls in the stack was cracked along the entire bottom!  Boo! Hoo!  Remember, this haul was from the Dollar Tree 30 miles away, on the way home from seeing my parents.  Should I drive 60 miles round trip to exchange a one dollar bowl?  No, there are tons of Dollar Trees in southeastern Wisconsin.  I'll just go to the one near my house and exchange it.  Except they didn't even carry those bowls.  In any color.  What now?  Wait until Saturday and stop at another one near the dermatologist's office after my daughter's appointment.  They didn't have them either.  OK, not a problem, we'll scoot off the highway on the way home and check another Dollar Tree.  NONE.  That makes four stores in three days, and I still need another bowl and two more caddies.  School doesn't start until September 1st around here.  Lots of time, lots of road trips, lots of Dollar Trees yet to be shopped.  Am I worried?  Goodness, no!

Have a great weekend!

Catherine