Guess What... Last Shopping Trip (Maybe)

Yes I know I have a shopping problem! My friend Jody (another teacher of course!) called and asked if I wanted to do some shopping at Target's dollar spot and a few dollar stores. A few hours of shopping turned into an all day affair! Not that I'm complaining though! I love shopping but it is better when someone else is there to bounce ideas off of. I know I have already hit these places up so I didn't plan on spending too much more money, but I can not say NO to shopping!! Below are some pics of what else I bought. I did find more finds that I missed the first time! Imagine that!

Target Dollar Spot

My friend picked up these cool math cubes and sorting beads for me because she is so thoughtful and they didn't have many left! I picked up the tabletop pocket chart because I always see these and wanted one so I finally bought one.  The number puzzle looked fun and can be added to one of my math stations.

These are my new tabletop pencil/crayon holders.  Last year I had 2 of my tabletop containers break and so I needed new ones this year.  After all my shopping I couldn't find any that I really liked that weren't super expensive.  I got these for $1 for now until I can find something I really like.  The cups were a funny story. Everywhere we went we were looking for cups in a set of four colors, preferably red, green, blue, and yellow. Everywhere we went we could not find any with yellow!! They were always red, blue, and green! Is there something wrong with yellow die!?!? We went to Target's seasonal section and they had their summer/ 4th of July stuff 50% off. We found this set of cups which appears to have the 4 colors we wanted. After we were soooooo excited (even the lady at the checkout thought we were crazy for getting so excited over cups) we brought the cups home only to find that the cups were really red, yellow, dark blue, and LIGHT BLUE! The light blue cup was with the yellow cup and since they were translucent cups the light blue and yellow mixed together to look green! Well guess instead of crayon cups we can use these for when we learn about mixing colors!!

We went to our local good will to see if we could find any deals on furniture and books.  I had never been before and was a little overwhelmed when I walked in. I was making zig-zags all over the store saying look at this look at that. My friend then had to stop me and show me "the way" to look through the store. We went down one side to the back then up the middle and then the other side. So glad she was there to help guide me! After all the looking I ended up with this hardback for $2. I was so excited because this book was on my wish list. I used this story last year to introduce schema. The book is about a kitten who is seeing the Moon for the first time and she thinks that it is a bowl of milk. It is a cute story and helps the children see that we all have different experiences in life which makes us see things in different ways.

Then we went back to the Dollar Tree so that my friend could get some of the math manipulatives I bought the other day. Well of course I had to buy things too! I bought the number puzzle to put in my math or fine motor center. Jody told me that I could glue the puzzle part down on something and then the kids could practice putting the numbers in the holes making their finger muscles grow.  The self adhesive green paper is really cool. Jody had just gotten back from The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, which from what I hear is aMaZiNg! We talked all about it over our like 2 hour lunch at subway! Anyways she learned that this stuff can be like highlighter tape. You can cut this stuff to whatever size you need and put it on a transparency. The kids can then keep this in their reading bags and then pull it off when they need to highlight something in their book (word, skill they learned, something the want to share at share time...).  When they are done they can put it back on their transparency for next time because it will still be sticky enough. So COOL!

 These were also bought at the Dollar Tree. These books are so awesome! If you do writing workshop in your class you have GOT to get these! They are all about different styles of writing and would make great mini lessons! Grandma's Lists shows a little girl making different lists for the grandma and explains purposeful ways to make them.  My Picture Story  is great for beginning writing because it explains how he wants to draw a picture and then try and write some words that tell what the story is. Writing Dino-Mite Poems is about different kinds of poems and then shows examples of them. All About (Real) Bears is so cute. The bear, a fictional character, is researching about real bears and writes an all about bear book.  Little Monster Becomes an Author shows how to go through the writing process from making a web of your ideas, draft, sloppy copy, sharing, revising, editing, publishing and then to the author's chair.  Room 9 Writes a Report is great at showing steps to write an actual report. It shows how to choose a topic, what to do with the information and how to share it, and how to become an expert.  Cat's Fairy Tale (A Cat and Dog Story is great at showing the importance of beginning, middle, end, and title. The cat is writing a story and the dog helps to assist the cat by telling him what he needs next in his story.  Fairy Tale Mail is great to use for letter writing. To understand some of these it would be helpful to have a fairy tale background.  Each page a fairy tale character writes a letter about a problem they are having to the queen. The queen then helps solve the problem by writing back with a solution.  All the books are amazing at showing steps to writing, but I really like that they use a lot of the language I use as well. I know I didn't do these books justice but they are really good books for writing! There are more in this series, but this is all our Dollar Tree had.

I have been either shopping or in my room this last week so I haven't really been able to post a lot lately. Yesterday I got A LOT done in my room!! I only have one more table of stuff to clear off and then I can post some classroom pics! I don't think I have ever been done this early with my room!