Back to School HAUL! Great deals!!

Hi everyone!

One of the beautiful things about being a teacher in the summer is that I can go run errands on a Tuesday afternoon without any traffic or craziness! So yesterday I did some damage finding things for my classroom. And this is what I ended up with in just a few hours...

Now remember that I live in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, so I don't have a Target in my town - gasp! Yes, sadly I have to drive about an hour to get to places like that. I went from bi-weekly Target trips to (usually) bi-monthly Target trips :( but Hubby is happy about that! (This is also why my hauls are larger now - oops.) I found some things at Dollar Tree and at Big Lots too that I will share. Now for the breakdown! I got some good stuff and some great deals, y'all!!

 

These were a great find in the Target Dollar Spot (later referred to as TDS). I took a picture of the front and the back to show you that there are four colors/styles of each cut-out. There are 24 in each package. I'm going to make these into games most likely, but you can really use them for a ton of things.

Prepare yourselves. This is also a Target Dollar Spot gem - POCKET CHARTS. Now, I cleaned out my Target of the four that they had left, but what a find! They're not huge, but I will definitely have use for these.

More from the Target Dollar Spot - I got loads of stickers, 50 small erasers (for my treasure box and welcome bags), and star-shaped and flower-shaped foam cut-outs. I use these to put my kids' names on for bulletin boards, etc. 

These may be my favorite things that I bought all day! These were in the TDS, but were $3 each. They are beautiful! The word linking puzzles are double-sided with different words, and the other one is an upper/lowercase letter matching on one side and numbers and their corresponding pictures on the other. I was impressed with how they presented the numbers, too. They did a mix of dot patterns, pictures, and real world examples where you would see that number. Comment below and let me know if you'd like me to do a detailed picture of any of these. Regardless, I am pretty sure I need more of these and I will be on the lookout once I'm back in the big city again!

I always pick up pails/buckets when I'm at Target. I use them for SO MANY things, I feel like I never have enough. Those binders weren't in the dollar section, but were still only about $2.50 each. I'm excited about that alphabet bingo find too (TDS). The pompoms, googly eyes, and beads were all finds at the Dollar Tree. I originally bought pompoms and googly eyes from the TDS but you get WAY more in a package at the Dollar Tree so I returned those once I saw these. Moral of this ramble - buy your pompoms and googly eyes at the Dollar Tree. Ha.

Who doesn't love some flashcards for their back pocket?? The blue packages are from the TDS and the purple packages are from Dollar Tree.

Okay y'all, these may be my other favorite things that I found yesterday. These are from Dollar Tree, and they have more combos than what I bought. (Edit: And now after writing this I need to go back and get all of the others. All of them.) There are 24 pieces (12 of each picture) in each package. Is your mind racing with 8 million ideas on what to do with these?? I am going to start making these into matching games next week (upper/lowercase letter, phoneme sorting, matching blends and digraphs, number/dot pattern correlation, etc.). How fun are these, seriously?? Match the peanut butter with its jelly brother - OMG I can't even stand the cuteness. (Cute with a PURPOSE - Deanna Jump)

The blue and green baskets are from Dollar Tree and I will be using them for my kids to keep certain things in. What are these things I speak of? I don't really know yet! I need to get in my classroom and start figuring out where things will go and what they'll be used for. The bottom picture are magazine baskets from Big Lots. They're $3 each and work perfectly to fit oversized picture books. This is the only place that I've found that carries this size. Let me know if you have any other remedies! Big Lots had a lot of bins too, but I liked the Dollar Tree selection better (and they're cheaper).

The bins on top are from Dollar Tree and I don't really have a use for them yet. I liked them because they're a solid, hard plastic and seemed like they'd be durable enough for kinder abuse. :) The pencil bags in the bottom picture are from Big Lots and they were $1 each. They have a clear window which will make them good for housing manipulatives. The mini plastic bins and the vinyl letters both came from Dollar Tree.

I got everything in these three pictures at Dollar Tree. The top pictures are just cute cut-outs, and I took all of the monster designs out of the package so you could see each of them. The middle pictures is just some fun stuff for my kiddos - puzzles, Hawaiian leis, and superstar fun glasses!

The bottom picture is not too exciting, but they all will be used as manipulatives (army men, rocks, gems). Stay tuned for a Make it Monday starring these gems!!

Whew! I'm pretty proud of how little I spent on this. The key to keeping up a nice classroom is buying when you find a deal. There are lots of deals out there, so stock up!! 

What have you already bought for your classroom?? Comment below and tell me!

cheers!

Kelley