School Supply Chaos or Calm?

I love office/school supplies!  

I think all teachers proudly, or secretly, love them.

I started my 16th year of teaching this past Wednesday and sorting and organizing all the supplies my first graders brought in was top priority.  Over the years I've figured out a good way that works for me so I can help students sort their supplies, organize their supplies AND keep track of who is missing which supplies.  My colleague across the hall saw what I was doing and thought it was great and wanted a copy...so I thought others might like to see what it is.

I just print out a bunch of class lists and then put the name of a school supply item at the top.  Then, one item at a time, they take their things out and show them to me.  If they don't have a certain item they have to come up and tell me so I can highlight their name on my list.   Then, later in the day during my prep, I fill out a note for each kiddo who is missing something and send it home.

It works really well and this year I bound all my lists together so I could easily flip through them as we were sorting and organizing.  

Hope your week (whether it was your first, not your first or not even back to school yet) was great!

Target Finds

One of the best things Target ever did was to create the Dollar Bins that lure everyone in the store to load up their carts and baskets with cheap little things that they may or may not need or use. 

  

I bet the people who benefit most from the Dollar Bins are TEACHERS.  We're resourceful, creative and frugal....and the Dollar Bins help us create amazing classrooms with tons of fun stuff! 

So I finally decided to check out our local Targets to see what goodies they had stocked up on.  We recently got back to Alaska from our annual month-long vacation in Minnesota (where I'm from) and their Target stores hadn't yet been invaded by school supplies.  

Here is what I've picked up...so far: