Celebration Extension and Another Field Trip

First things first!

I was going to choose the winner of my 1st Birthday Celebration tonight but I have some big news!

Terri from The First Grade Princess, who just happens to be in Hawaii right now, emailed me the other day and asked if she could donate something to my giveaway...I was like, YEAH!  Now if you don't follow her...head over there now!

The 1st Grade Princess

Did you go?

I'll wait.............

Okay I can't wait any longer....anyway, her package hasn't arrived to the Buckeye state yet, so I'm extending my Birthday Celebration indefinitely...well, until it arrives!  :)  I'm so excited...I don't even know what's heading my way!  So, if you haven't already entered my giveaway, go ahead!  You can even add a bonus comment if you want!  :)  On a side note, never, ever in my wildest dreams did I expect to have so many entries...and new followers because of all of your shout-outs...I'm so humbled that you find something about my blog that makes me worth following!

Enter my give-away by clicking here!

Now onto my field trip the Lakeshore Learning Store!!

So, last summer a Lakeshore Learning Store opened about 1 1/2 hours from where I live.  It was on my list last summer to go and check it out but with taking classes, I never made the trip.  So, after breakfast with my inner-circle-of-trust, my friend Megen and I ventured out and headed east!  Oh my gosh my friends...that store is AMAZING!  Everything a teacher needs to start the year is on sale right now...borders, decor, stickers, certificates, etc!  And I got a few freebies too because I spent $20 (like that was hard to do...geesh!)!  Here's what I picked up today...

I fell in love with the polka-dotted letters, name tags, and calendar days in my color scheme!  I picked up the Happy Birthday Certificates for $2.79 and the Lesson Plan book for free!  (Not sure if I'll use that because I type my lesson plans on my laptop...but it has a pretty great calendar on the inside!)  I picked up a copy of the Poetry Journals I ordered for my class so I can start making my Smart Board slides to coordinate with each poem.  Here's a picture of the inside...

I love that there's a little writing prompt and then an area where the kiddos can write down or get autographs of the people who they read the poem to. 

I use "All About Me" posters with my kiddos every year.

I usually send them home as homework after our first week together and then I hang them on our outside bulletin board for the entire year.  The kids love looking at them...and so do the rest of the staff in our building.  I have purchased posters similar to this from Oriental Trading in the past but saw these and since they were on sale I picked them up. 

I paid $7.99 for a set of 30!

 Check out these Happy Birthday certificates!

I picked them up to give to the children from the other classes I will be teaching on their birthdays.  Since I'll be their reading/language arts teacher, I thought they were very appropriate!  The left half is perforated so that they can tear it off and have a bookmark!

And then, because I spent $20 so easily, I got a free bag too!

It's one of those environmentally safe shopping bags which are great, but I always tend to overfill them and then they rip, so I'll be using my bag to transport my laminating items to my mom when I have cutting that needs to be done.  (She says that cutting my laminating stuff is therapy for her...hey...whatever floats her boat.  I'm just grateful she does it for me.)

Needless to say, I'll be heading back to the Lakeshore Learning Store in a few weeks to get my last minute school stuff...totally worth the drive!

I keep reading about all of the Back to School finds everyone is getting at Walmart so I headed into a Walmart nearby and found this:

Our "seasonal" aisles are still filled with water balloons, beach toys, buckets, and summer fun!  See...up here in Northern Ohio, near the lake...we're still in island mode...at least in this Walmart!  :)

Sorry about the long post tonight...but I had things to share!

Take care!