Third Grade Thinkers: Word Work Station: Cup Stacking

Check out this blog I found with a SUPER simple center idea for word work. The only supplies needed are labels, a sharpie and clear plastic cups!! Cool!!!

Third Grade Thinkers: Word Work Station: Cup Stacking: "So here's a word work station that can help your students practice making/spelling words. You can design it to meet the needs of students in..."

OMG!! Compositioin Notebooks are $0.10 at Staples tomorrow!!!

I am so excited about this deal!!  I have not seen composition notebooks for anything less than $0.25 (and that's only if you're lucky) for several years.  $0.10 is a STEAL!!!  Get to Staples early, but leave some for me!!!  Limit 3 (unless you're a teacher. . . then it's 25) and $5 min. purchase.

To meet that minimum $5 purchase, you can get a ream of copy paper for $4.49, send in the EASYrebate and you really only pay $0.50, or Cadoozles mechanical pencils for $5, but FREE after EASYrebate.  They also have rulers, striped paper clips and Really Useful Boxes for $0.25 each.  Another great thing is the hanging file crates for $3 or 4 drawer rolling carts for $9

Office Depot has $0.01 glue, $0.50 erasers, pens, poly binders and staple removers.

Office Max has $0.01 filler paper, $0.10 pack of pens, and $0.25 poly folders.  There's also a coupon in the back of their ad for a $0.20 little tub of pencil grips and erasers.

Guess where I'm going tomorrow?

Crayola Dream-Makers Sweepstakes

Enter the Crayola Dream-Makers Sweepstakes and win Dream-Makers Student Activity Centers.  Cool!  While you're there, check out all the cool resources they have for educators!  Lots of great ideas for infusing Art into standards-based education, grant opportunities, and even lesson plans!  I love the Lights, Camera, Color area where you can turn a photograph into a coloring page.  Great idea for the beginning of the year!

AAAAHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! So exciting!!!

Teachers, don't forget that Staples penny items limit is 25 for you, not just 2!!!  This week it's pencils, index cards and highlighters. . .  If you take advantage of the 25 limit for Teachers, that's 50 highlighters (2/pack), 200 pencils (8/pack), and 2500 index cards for a total of $0.75!!!  A:ND, take care of that pesky $5 purchase requirement by getting the pens from their ad and turn around and get those for FREE after rebate.

Go check out my other blog, Heather's Hot Deals to see the awesome tip I learned about today at Joann and their coupons!!

Oh yea, and don't forget that Joann has a Teacher Reward program, too!!  It runs Sept-Aug, so not useful right now, but it's 15% off everything you buy during the year.  Can't beat it!

Tagxedo: It All Boils Down to This!

Tagxedo is the most wonderful tool I've discovered from reading blogs this summer!!  If you love Wordle, you'll like Tagxedo even more.  It has more options for changing your word cloud. The one I've posted below is made from the entire text of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Then there are options for how many of the most frequently used words to include in the word cloud, up to 600.  The easiest use of this program is to make a cool piece of art, or a gift, but also to explore main idea/characters/themes in a text.  It is so easy!!  You can simply paste text in, or give the site the URL of a blog, website, twitter account, or delicious tags,  and it will find the text itself.  Cool, right?  The possibilities are endless.  You can change the colors, shape, design, orientation, font, etc, etc.

Here's a great resource for 101 ways to use Tagxedo.

How will YOU use Tagxedo in the classroom?