Dollar Days Linky

Click on the image above to visit A Teacher Without a Class

I am linking up again with A Teacher Without A Class for Teacher $ days.  I live in Canada so really NOTHING here is a dollar.  All our dollar stores are now $1.25 stores including Dollar Tree.  I love me some Dollar Tree though.  There are not a lot of them in the Toronto area yet, but I am lucky to live near one.  I love to roam around and get ideas for school.  I never leave without spending at least $20 on something for my classroom.  

Although I am no way close to being in "back to school" mode, I have not totally forsaken my teacher shopping habit.  In fact, in the two weeks since my mother passed away, one of the ways I have sought shelter from the chaos of the aftermath of the funeral, and the ongoing saga of being the executor of the estate, has been to indulge in a little "retail therapy".  I tell you I am going to need REAL therapy at the rate all of this legal, financial stuff is going.  But that is NOT for this blog post!

As I have posted about before on my blog, I like to create Back to School Survival Kits for my students.  I put them together during the week leading up to school starting up again, and then put them on the student desks the night before school starts.  I used to create them using paper bags, then I moved up to using pencil boxes, and then I went to using pencil pouches.  The students seem to like the pouches.  The other day when I was making my bi-weekly pilgrimage to Dollar Tree I spotted these

This is the closet picture I could find to the actual pouches I got from Dollar Tree.  I will NOT be putting scissors in the pouches for my students.  Last year I pre-ordered these from For Teachers Only.

I loved that they came with the pencils, the ruler, the two cap erasers and the sharpener.  They were actually LESS than a dollar a piece.  You can click on the image to see them online.  Well guess what?  This year, with all the chaos surrounding my mother's illness and palliative care, I was not able to order them in time and they are SOLD OUT!

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Not to be deterred, I decided to make my own using items from Dollar Tree.  Now I do have to admit that it will cost more in the end, but I can tailor what goes into each pouch right?  I am going to put in one regular eraser, one pencil, one sharpener and the other things I list on here: 

While I was there, I got some more composition notebooks.  I started WHOLE CLASS JOURNALS last year and the kids loved it.  I really just wanted the students to be WRITING more often, and to be reading each others work.  The WHOLE CLASS JOURNAL idea worked really well with the group I had.  I am hoping it is as successful this year.

You can find lots of free WHOLE CLASS JOURNAL covers for your notebooks here Teachers Pay Teachers.