School supply shopping!

I have decided that a large percentage of the reason most of us became teachers is due to our obsession with school supplies.  For me, today was one of the few days that I let the animal out of the cage and just went shopping.  I sat down this morning and decided that if I only have one week left of summer vacation, and will be spending most of that time up north, I had better make the most of today and find the best deals.  So, I made a spreadsheet.  Yes friends, I made a spreadsheet.  I looked up the sales at Target, Office Max and Staples and compared all three with the things I needed to purchase.  (Just a quick side note, I have not found ANYTHING useful at Office Max in the past few years.  How Staples has a 15% of School Supplies card that cost me $7.00 and I can use it every time I go in from now until the middle of September! are they still open?)  Then, I went shopping.

As usual, I had to be careful at Target because I can easily walk out of there with $200 worth of stuff(as I'm sure most of us could), but I had a list, and I stuck to it.  The purchases included:

• $.99 for 6 glue sticks

• $.99 for packages of big markers

• $.99 for packages of 8 bic mechanical pencils (I sell them in class to those 8th graders that have forgotten their writing utensils.  Proceeds go to class parties.)
• $.99 for 12-pack of colored pencils
• $.49 for personal size pencil sharpeners

Now, I realize that if I waited I would be able to find better deals, however, I start back to school in 9 more days (Aaaahhhhh!  Where did my summer go???), and would like to get some of this taken care of now.

Then on to Staples where I found the greatest discovery yet!  Staples has a 15% of school supplies card that cost me $7.00 AND I can use it every time I go in from now until the middle of September!  Just my purchases today covered the price of the card.  Genius.  Simply Genius.  Somebody's finally thinking up there.  I didn't get as much of the little stuff at Staples, but they did have 5-packs of highlighters for $.50 (limit 4).  I may go back tomorrow and get four more packs.  I did however get some larger things that I am going to use to reorganize my room.

This morning I spent some time reading through Teaching in Room 6 and really liked some of her ideas for organizing.  Specifically having an Organization Center that has everything the kids need, all in one place.  I've noticed that when I try to designate different areas of the room for different things, they forget what goes where.  I'm going to try putting everything in one spot this year and see how things go.

Happy school supply shopping friends!