Pictures and a New Product!

I know it's been a few days BUT I FINALLY have pictures of all my great deals and purchases from the past few days....

Teachers Tools for The Grade is closing their doors on Sunday, June 29th. Such a sad day, one of my favorite stores to stop in and pick up goodies for my classroom! I got some great deals when I was there this past week - 70% off! I purchased a coffee pot for my daughter for only $8, she LOVES it! I got three different bulletin board sets (birthday, manners and weather), a new hand washing poster, birthday crowns, a few different types of bulletin board boarders, tons of stickers, lots of pencils, stamps, stationary, and some spring/Easter window clings for my daughter! I'm hoping to head over to the store one last time to say goodbye and get a few more goodies!

Shopping in Target's Dollar Bins is always a treat - especially when you are 5 hours from home and can find all sorts of goodies! From white boards to flash cards I LOVE all my purchases and my daughter loves her new sandwich cutters!

These are the goodies I got at my local Target! I'm so excited to decorate and hang up my new foam pieces... first I have to figure out how I am going to use them!

After shopping in TWO Targets miles and miles apart this is what I ended up with! I'm so excited to start organizing, hanging and using all these wonderful new supplies.

How could I pass up the opportunity to purchase CRAYOLA Crayons for only 25 cents? What a steal! I saved over $50 on all these and spent under $15!!! LOVE IT!

Between Target, Toys-R-Us and the teacher store in NY that is closing on June 29th (so sad to see them go!) I think I made out pretty well! Have you found any great deals? I'm still trying to locate a few more items - blue and yellow small pocket charts from the dollar bins at Target and the small foam cubes/dice from the Dollar Tree. My local stores don't have either of these items, I'm disappointed and hope I can find at least a few packs of the cubes. Miss. Kindergarten has a GREAT blog post about how she is using these dice  DIY Foam Dice and I know that her ideas would be a great addition to my classroom... now if I can only find these dice!

Since I couldn't find the dice I decided to start working on another project - my Attendance sheets! Every year I make calendars to keep track of my classes attendance. The students sign in each day by moving their names on our class chart (I'll have to get a picture of it once I'm back in the classroom), but I need a way of keeping a record of their attendance. Our office gives us a printout for attendance but the whole class doesn't fit on one page and I find it hard to follow the lines on the pages. That being said I took matters into my own had and I make my own attendance calendars. I usually rush at the end of each month (or a few days into the current month) to try to make my calendars... but the teaching blogging world has inspired me and I actually made ALL my calendars already! I am all set for the whole year, I just have to add my students names! I'm super excited about this!

My calendars are pretty simple and easy to use - all you have to do is add your students names! I never mark off who is present (that would mean WAY to many check marks!) instead I use a red pen to mark who is absent and a blue pen to mark who is present.... OK I start like that in September and by the end of October I am using a pencil so I can easily erase the marks, plus pencils are easier to come by in my classroom!

You can see in the picture above that the calendar clearly has NO SCHOOL marked off on a few days!  I love how neat and clean that looks. Now my packet contains 3 sets of blank calendars with dates and months already filled in BUT there are no days off marked (does that make sense? I didn't mark off NO SCHOOL on any days). The sets that you will get are blank with no graphics, seasonal/holiday themed and pirate themed. I also included the calendar I will be using so you can see what the year would look like with our vacations marked off.

IF you love these calendars but want them to look as pretty as mine with all the vacations and PD days marked off for you please send me a message, include your email address and your school calendar (or the vacation/pd days in a list with what you want them to say), you can also include what theme you want. I hope you enjoy these calendars as much as I do! Stop by my TpT store and check them out: Back to School Monthly Attendance Calendars/Forms If you decide to use these forms please leave some feedback, I'd love to hear what you think and how you use them!

I'm working on my forms for organizing my reading and writing conferences... I hope to have them up and will write about them in the next few days!