Twas the day before Thanksgiving...

Yay for days off!! Don't get me wrong, I love my kiddos, but it's so nice to have a break from school. Although today has been even more stressful than school. Evan and I finally went to the DMV to get our car registered, which cost a heap ton of money, and I had to go to the Department of Education to drop off some test scores, only to find out that I still need to pay another arm and leg in a year. Needless to say, I was a bit cross.

But some shopping made up for it. I snagged these adorable beauties for only $3.50!!! They were already super cheap and another 40% off of that!

 Not sure if they will ever make it to school, but they are fairly comfortable miraculously and they are purple!

And I'm a sucker for Bath and Body Works candles. I'm going to give one away as a Christmas present though! They both smell so amazingly good though. They are my absolute favorite and they can melt away any bad mood. 

 

 In other news, yesterday my kids made fact family turkeys, as inspired by Amanda at One Extra Degree. 

 My kiddos write the three main numbers on the wing of the turkey and then wrote one fact on each feather. They are really struggling with fact families though. Most of them understand the two addition sentences, but struggle with the subtraction. And others of them can get the two addition sentences and only one subtraction sentence. After break, I am definitely planning to do more with fact families. I saw somewhere out in blogland making fact family kites so we'll probably do that in addition to re-doing, re-doing, re-doing them!!
But here's how they turned out - pretty cute I think, no?

Well, that's all for now. Evan and I are going to Thanksgiving dinner at my neighbor teacher's house tomorrow. I am making my all time favorite stuffing - celery and sausage, rolls, and Mrs Bainbridge's mom's green bean casserole!
It'll be hard/weird/sad not being at home with my family for Thanksgiving (this is my first time being away from home for Thanksgiving) but I hope I'll be ok!

And Renee from The Reading Corner, who always has amazing math ideas (I always use them for centers) is having a giveaway for making 5 and 10, which would be wonderful for some of my kids who are still struggling with number sense and ways to make 5 and 10!


PS, only two more days until it's socially acceptable to be pumped about Christmas!!!

I guess Marlee missed the memo that you can only get ready for Christmas AFTER Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Treasures 4 Teachers

I, like many of you, am always looking for bargains when it comes to supplies I need for my classroom. Even thought the teacher that I am taking over for left me a ton of resources, I'm still finding myself needing simple supplies like office supplies and general decorating materials. Luckily, one of the other teachers at my orientation (she has taught before but not in my district) filled me in on an amazing store in Tempe. It's called Treasures 4 Teachers. She described it as a goodwill store for teachers. In order to get in, teachers must get a membership, kind of like Sam's Club. A yearly pass is $35 and gets you access to loads of goodies. The store is separated into different parts. The largest part is the $5/bag part. In this area, everything that you can fit into one of their provided bags costs $5. Doesn't matter what is in there; if it fits, it's $5. They were out of the reusable bags that come with the membership so I got a Trader Joe's bag instead to fill with goodies. 

Here is the bag of stuff I got! I could have stuffed it more but there wasn't much good stuff left since I went later in the day.

Inside the bag, there is...

Some paper that I was thinking would be great at the writing center that I (may) have. It's not very pretty paper, but my students won't care.

Now I am a binder clip junkie so I pretty excited to find the jumbo ones! I love binder clips and the jumbo ones are great to use in binders to keep stuff separate. I also got one of the receipt paper rolls for writing down each day we have been in school. I also found some adhesive putty. The package is opened and half of one of the rows is gone but that's ok! I also got those little circles that reinforce three hole punches. I'm super clumsy when it comes to three hole punching and I always misalign the paper so there are papers that have awkward holes. But now I can fix them with these lovely gems! Lastly, I got a stack of cut up cardstock. The size is small, but I know I can find some use for them. Bookmarks perhaps?

Now, there are three other sections. The next section is a price as marked area. As the name suggests, all the items in this area are a la carte so you have to check the prices on each individual item. This is where the furniture and nicer office supplies are. In this section, I got...

A magazine holder! Just one thought as it was the last one there after another teacher piled like six into her cart. Oh well, I'll take it anyways! And for that price?!?! I didn't get any furniture since most of it was filing cabinets and I already have one, but I bet there are book shelves and stuff there on a regular basis.

The next section is my favorite: the free section. In this section, everything is free! Free, free, free! So I got these beauties:

Big, three inch binders! New, they would have definitely cost me probably like $7 or more apiece, and I walked out with them for nothing. There were heaps of binders in the section so you could definitely get enough for all your kids there if you wanted to. 

The last room I went was the book room. All of the books in the room range in cost from 25 cents to $2. I picked up a few kids books so add to my collection and I found a Fountas and Pinnell phonics teacher resources for second grade for only $1! Even though I'm not teaching second grade, I feel like it still might be helpful! Plus, for only $1, I couldn't not get it! 

Lastly, they also have a school supply store that sells new supplies, but at reasonable prices. I didn't get anything there since my school supplies everything kids need. 

So I am pretty pleased with my purchases! I will definitely be going back again soon to look for more treasures. So, if you live in the Phoenix area, I would definitely recommend going and checking it out! I think there also might be one in Tuscon, but I'm not entirely sure. Click here for more info! 

Tomorrow, I'm headed back to school to work in my room some more and I have a new hire meeting at 2:00! Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!