Getting Ready for August--School Supply Shopping!!

One of my goals for the 2013-2014 school year is to blog about my classroom.  There are two major reasons:

• I want to help spread great ideas for the classroom.  I love teaching blogs--I use them all the time for new ideas.  My hope is that someone might find my blog useful as well and I can be part of this community.
• I'd like to have a record of things that I do--be able to look back on things that worked, things that didn't, and use this as a tool to plan from year to year.  I think I might be able to use this as an "artifact" in my professional development.

With that said--- it's almost time for us to return to school.  I have been hitting up the Back-to-School sales and getting things ready at home and in my class.  Here in Georgia, we seem to go back to school before everyone else in the country--I think it is customary everywhere else to return after Labor Day.  I return on Wednesday, the 31st of July for pre-planning, my new students register for the year that Friday (the 2nd), and school starts the next Wednesday (the 7th). 
 
I will post a little bit more about myself and my classroom later, but for now, I wanted to share some of the items I have picked up for my room this year.
 
I LOVE school supplies (as I have noticed so many of us educators do!).  I was just waiting for Wal-Mart to put out the new supplies for the year because I needed to stock up on lots of items, namely art supplies. I am not finished yet, but here is what I have picked up so far.
 

 

 

During the school sales at Wal-Mart I like to stock up--I notice that before the second semester starts in January, they do not have these sales, so I wanted to make sure I had enough for the whole year so I don't have to spend more to re-stock halfway through.

 

Most of these items were less than $1.00.  I think the only things that were more were the Expo markers--I belive they were $2.50. Things shown above include:

 

Crayola markers (skinny and regular)

Crayola colored pencils

Crayola crayons

Super Sticky Post-its

Index cards

Expo markers

Glue sticks

  

 

That was my first trip to the store.  A few days later, they had finished putting out the rest of the supplies and I picked up some more things:

 

 

I was pretty excited about the small packs of Crayolas in this picture. I have never seen these before--they are packs of 8 crayons with all of the crayons belonging to the same color family.  I picked up packs of red, green, blue, and neons.  Here is a close-up of the packaging:

 

 

 
 

 

 

I have already purchased the normal 24-pack crayons for my group supply baskets, but I had to have these when I saw them.  In science we tend to use lots of green, red, and blue, and there are only a couple of those in each box.  This way, I have plenty of the colors that I need and not lots of extras of those colors nobody ever uses (I'm talking to you, white/brown/orange/gray crayons!)  They have a box for each color (even a set of pastels!), but I didn't think the other shades would be as useful.  You can look at these on the Crayola website and see all of the packs they offer, but so far, the only place I have seen them for purchase is Wal-Mart.

 

Other items from the picture above:

 

Large pencil boxes (for group supplies)

Small pencil boxes (for group supplies)

Zippered pencil pouches (for an organizing project)

Red pens

3-ring binder (to set up a model binder)

Notebook dividers

Composition book (to set up a model interactive science notebook)

 

 

Those were all of the supply items I had purchased, and then my mom got a few things for my classroom that she had heard me talk about. 

 

I wanted a separate clipboard for each class period this year, so when she saw these awesome animal print ones, she knew I would love them.  It worked out perfectly, because there are four designs and I have four academic classes.  I believe she found these at Wal-Mart, too--I must have missed them when I was there!

 

She also purchased lots of extra pencils and paperclips--because I always need paperclips and the kids always need pencils! 

 

 

Thanks for reading my blog if you've made it this far!  Next time, I will give you a preview of my room (with some boring "before" pics and some in progress pictures as well).  In the meantime--leave a comment and let me know--What kinds of things are you guys finding to help get your classrooms ready for the new year?  Am I missing out on some "must-haves" that you have found?