Money Saving Tips, part one!

As summer starts I have a list of things that I want to accomplish - including figuring out how sleep past the 5 am that my body got trained to all school year!  One of the biggest issues that teachers have is how to provide for all of their classroom needs on a usually a limited or non-existent classroom budget!   So I thought that throughout the summer I would share some of my favorite money saving tips!

1)  How to maximize card stock and colored paper.  I was in Target recently shopping for card stock to print my newest Bingo Game on.  It features two different types of cards, 30 each of two types.  As I was standing there pricing out card stock I had lightbulb moment!  I realized that if I printed my Bingo Cards with one type of card on each side I would only  need 30 pieces instead of 60.  Big Savings!  Especially if I laminated them afterward to save them for multiple years of use!  

Surface Area and Volume Bingo

2)  Saving on consumable classroom supplies.  I go through glue sticks, colored pencils, erasers and pencils like they are candy throughout the school year!  After a few years of spending almost my entire classroom budget on just these things I needed to find a better solution.  I realized that usually about 2 months before school starts the office supply stores start offering pencil, nickle and quarter sales with each weekly ad.  For example Office Max will have 12 packs of pencils for a penny.  While there is usually a limit per transaction, I will either take my husband with me or go a few times in a week until I get what I need.  Here is sample add from last year so you can see what I mean!  

3)  How to test it out before you laminate it permanently!  Those things that I keep permanently I like to laminate to make them last.  Sometimes, however, I'm not sure if it is going to work the way that I want but I also don't want to print it twice.  My solution?  Page Protectors!  They work great for full page sheets so that you can write on them with dry erase markers and test them out before taking the final step of lamination (or a way to skip it totally!).  If you are think yes, but what about task cards that are smaller...well I found these that work perfectly!  They are for 4x6 recipe cards (they come in 3x5 too) but work great for task cards.  

 I'll be back later this summer with more tips!  I hope you found these useful! :)