Shop til you drop!

One of my favorite back to school activities is shopping with my mom, who also happens to be my grade level partner.  We get along great and it gives us tons of time to collaborate out of school too.  For the past three years we have made a pilgrimage trip to Lakeshore. We were BEYOND excited to find out there would be one less than 2 hours away from where we live.  

Isn't it pretty!?

Here is part of my haul.... 

This year our trip had a couple other stops and my 4 month old was a real trooper! He was in a good mood the WHOLE day!  

Our first stop was Staples for some great deals on composition notebooks, crayons, folders, Post-its (all different sizes!!) and Sharpies. 

Next we headed to lunch at a local Pizza place and tried their bacon and Gouda  pizza, and Margherita pizza.  They were DELICIOUS! 

Next came the lovely Lakeshore store that is just so full of fun things and good deals.  I love going there because I can actually see what things look like instead of just looking at a catalog and having to guess. In my cart at Lakeshore was: All About Me charts (I'm planning on doing a student of the week with them), number line, Velcro tabs, Happy Birthday stickers and certificates, Holiday stickers I plan on using with my  new calendar folders (I'll blog about that later this year!) and money stickers, and 5 storage tubs (yellow, orange, red, blue, and green: I'll be using these for supplies) and to tie it all up they give away a free plan book with a 20 dollar purchase! 

Our next stop that day was a teacher sale. I found out about it through Facebook when the Here we Grow Again group had a kids sale this spring.  They then advertised that they were having a teacher sale (teachers can sell their things for profit!) and I won pre-sale tickets! Meaning my  mom and I got to go the night before it was open to the public.  Lots of stuff and lots of people in a small building (while carrying a baby in a pouch) made for a hard time looking through things but I still managed to come away with some great things for cheap: road rug ($9), metal shelf ($5), cash register ($7), clear binder sleeves ($2), and 4 paper punches ($8). 

We then headed to Target for our final stop that day. I came away with two pocket charts, a Crayola colors game and counting cards, Popsicle stick colors, Crayola colors book, Tropical Flair pens, and two sets of lights (don't ask me where I'm going to put those :) Wrapping up our day and getting us home at 10:00 when we left at 11:00. Needless to say we aren't fast shoppers. 

The following day I knew I wanted to work in my room and would need a few more things before I could get started (I know, I know, how could I possibly need more! but I did.) So we headed to Dollar Tree, and Wal-Mart.  

Dollar Tree Haul: 20 (or so) colored/clear shoe boxes for storage, 2 red and 2 orange tubs. 2 red/blue/green containers with lids, 1 lanyard, 1 teacher notebook, and 10 photo albums. I have ideas for all of these too!

At Wal-mart I got a crate to make a Sub Tub, 20 mini crayon boxes, 3 large crayon boxes, more crayons, green and blue plastic folders, Ticonderoga pencils (pre-sharpened) and Astrobrights paper for back to school flip books.

Overall I am VERY pleased with my purchases and writing this blog about what I bought reminds me of how much I have to do, and how much I have to share with everyone about my ideas! So stay tuned so you can see what I do with everything!