I dunno about in your area, but today my local WalMarts were rolling out their school supplies! I'm broke until Friday, but I did see 24 packs of Crayola crayons (no other brand will do) for 50 cents each, and I purchased 2 10-count packages of washable broadline CrazyArt markers for 50 cents each! I can't wait until Friday - for under $50, I can usually ensure that my kiddos all start out with the right supplies! (many of my kiddos bring no supplies at all.)
yep! I was just there...whats crazy is 24 pk of crayons are 50cent but a 8 pack is 88 center...go figure
So, this might be a dumb question, but say I buy some supplies and later find out I don't need them...if I keep the receipt, can I return them? Does anyone know if they have a certain limit for when you can return (30 days, etc.?) I didn't know if some special rules might apply since the stuff is on sale/clearance or whatever. I have a feeling that given the ses population of my new school, I'm going to have a lot of kids that don't bring in supplies. I'd like to get them now when they're available and on sale whether then waiting until 6-8 weeks from now when everything is picked over...but I also don't want to spend the money now only to find out I didn't really need to get all of that stuff. I know my grade level does "community supplies" and the lists are HUGE, so I wondered if they purposely put more stuff on there hoping that would make up for kids that don't bring anything.
Oh don't tell me that! I'm on shopping probation! I need to go early this year-I always stock up on the 3-prong folders so I use them for their journal pages. Last year I went to late and the price had gone up already.
At a walmart close to me I love the price of the elmers glue stick, a two pack for 50 cents or a single stick for 10 cents! Wonder what most people will buy? LOL
Wal Mart is pretty liberal with returns. They will accept returns without a receipt, but they give you a WalMart gift card instead of cash. Since I grocery shop at WalMart, that's basically the same as cash to me! They do have some type of policy on that, though... I think they will only accept returns without a receipt from the same person a few times a year. Not sure of the exact policy since I usually do have my receipt handy. With no receipt, they take your driver's license number, etc. So best idea is to save your receipt, but if you happen to lose it, they'll work with you.
Where in the store would the teacher stuff be located? With back to school or somewhere else? Usually the section layouts are the same in every store, although maybe in a different part of the store (meaning front, back, etc).
I bought 6 packs of markers yesterday for 50 cents each. I was going to buy more, but money is tight until Friday, and I knew my hubby wouldn't be happy. I can't wait until I can go back and buy glue sticks!
I found some awesome stuff for my prize box in their clearance aisle. I also found some great odds and ends in the arts and crafts dept. like erasers and flashcards. I, too am excited for all the school supply sales!
Is Walmart pretty much the cheapest place you're going to find the composition books? They are 50 cents each there. Which doesn't seem bad, except that I need 120 of them to give each of my students 2 for different notebooks I want to start. (I have a homeroom of 29 and switch with another teacher halfway through the day to teach ELA/SS to her homeroom as well)
The only place I've gotten them for less than 50 cents is at Staples, where they were 25 cents last summer. With Staples new policies about extreme deals, it is probably less hassle to pick them up at Wal-Mart unless you buy a lot of other items from Staples.
They might have raised the prices. I have never seen Walmart back to school sale prices go lower than what they were at the beginning of the sale. I have seen 2 different Walmarts within 20 minutes of each other have different prices.
I'm considering getting the .17 cent spiral notebooks instead. Do you think that's much of a downgrade from composition books? Do they fall apart a lot easier because they'er more flemsy?Just trying to save money where I can!
I did composition notebooks last year for interactive notebooks. I really didn't like them as much due to the small size. I'm going back to spiral bound notebooks. When I used them before I thought they held up fine as long as the students weren't ripping out pages.
That's a good point! I think I might stick to buying the spirals then. The difference between 17 cents and 50 cents never seems like much until you're buying over 100 of something!
Question to all: Do you provide crayons/map pencils/glue/scissors to all your students? Or do you make boxes of all these things for each group to share?
I like the composition books for my younger students because they can't destroy them as easily. My first graders destroyed all their spiral notebooks. Covers and pages were falling off all over the place, but all the composition notebooks stayed together nicely.
I have table supplies, so everyone at the table shares community style. I will put crayons, glue sticks, scissors and pencils out at each table. I tried to have each child have their own supplies last year, and I hated it. I went back to community style half-way through the year.
I have found the spiral notebooks to hold up just fine. I use them for interactive notebooks in both reading and science. I have always used the composition books for writing because that's a school wide tradition (not sure why) but spirals would really work fine for writing, too. I have third graders. Glue, grayons, and scissors are all on the supply list. I do keep a stock of glue sticks in a central location because we surely run out of their supply before the year is over. I also keep scissors, crayons, and highlighters accessible to them (with a sticker on the box/handle/tube to remind students to return it when finished).
I totally agree that no other brand of crayons will do- crayola is the best! I don't have a walmart near me that I shop at though. I will have to wait until they go on sale at Target.
My students all have individual supplies. I tried "community" supplies, but found that I needed to hold certain children more accountable (i.e., if you break/throw/lose all of your crayons, then you have none to use... at least for a while), so I changed to individual supplies. I HAVE to purchase supplies for my kiddos because a fair number of them will not have any otherwise. Luckily, my district will reimburse up to $100 for expenses like that incurred by teachers.
Walmart was a goldmine today! Got everything I needed for 20 bucks. They have $.17 spiral notebooks. Got the aforementioned crayons, bic pens, and colored pencils too.
I am gonna check out my local walmart tomorrow. I am in desperate need of those shoebox size storage bins to organize the supplies in my room. Last summer I found 3-packs of the ones with the white snap on lids for a buck! I am hoping to find them again, for at least relatively the same price. I am also going to buy as many gluesticks and crayons as I can afford.
Check Target. I just bought a 5 pack of those shoe bins for 2.99. They had ones with red or turquoise lids if I remember correctly.
I wish I could come to the States and shop! I've just compared prices and a 24 pack of crayola crayons in Australia costs the equivalent of $3, a 22gm of Elmer's glue is $2.52. We never see bargains as good as yours and I have an eagle eye for a bargain!
Wow! Those bins are $5.99 at my Target. I really hope they'll reduce the price to $2.99 at some point!
Everything is to share. Even the supplies the studies bring in are shared. We have a caddy for each table filled with art supplies that come out when the students need them for a project. Pencils are kept on their tables, 5-6 at each table. Two students have the responsibility of sharpening them each day and replenishing when they get too small. We also keep a container of extra sharpened pencils in the classroom so that the sharpener is only running during morning routine.
I make boxes for all to share - ala Harry Wong! It works well. I sort thru the boxes at the end of the year and replace only parts of each. I usually have a couple of students do the work. They test each marker - if it is going dry, they chuck it, they throw out any small broken crayons and sharpen the rest, and they sharpen the colored pencils. I also have extras for those kids who are in time out or can't work in a group.
Several of you have commented about the difference in prices in different locations but the same chain. My rule is this - if I want school supplies for my classroom, I go to the wal-mart, Staples, Goodwill, etc that serves the lower SES area. If I want a great selection of books/CDs/odds and ends, I go to the Goodwill/TJMaxx/Ross's that serves a higher economic area. The Staples stores, for example, are grouped by region. The sales fliers that go out in the Sunday papers are different! I have one region 20 minutes to the north and one to the south. I accidentally took the ad from the one that serves my are to the store to the north. That is how I found this out - the manager explained the differences. The north store actually had some great deals on items that weren't on sale in the other. This fact alone supports shopping the deals at multiple stores in the same chain.
Very interesting. I will have to put that to test. There is a beautiful Target next to my school but it serves a very low economic area. Then there is one by my house that is decent, but it serves a much higher economic area. I've never really compared prices at the two though.
Today's "haul:" 25 purple plastic portfolios @ 50 cents each to be used for homework folders 25 yellow plastic portfolios @ 50 cents each to be used for daily conduct folders 1 handwriting pad - I have a personal laminator, and I plan to laminate several pages to be used as dry-erase handwriting practice sheets. and I saw individual manual pencil sharpeners with both large "shaving bins" and holes for both large & small pencils (necessary in the primary grades) @ 88 cents each - I plan to purchase some of these later.
Uh-oh Last year I purchased Crayola Crayons for my class. This past week I was at Target and saw Rose Art Crayons for .25 cents a piece and I couldn't pass it up. Am I going to regret this purchase? Muahaha. Maybe my students will hate them so much they will leave them alone and bring their own supplies. My Crayolas were used and abused last year.
I always buy a supply of crayons when they're on sale and give them each a box as a "Happy New Year" gift after Christmas break, since so many of them need refreshing by then. (Except for the summer I forgot that box was in my trunk... )
Oh no! That's def. something I would do! I like the idea of giving a box as a Happy New Year gift. Maybe I'll try that with pencils. We rarely ever get to use crayons or colored pencils so ours didn't get that beat up this year. When I finally got around to organizing our supply closet in June there were brand new boxed shoved in the back that we never even used. Of course the last few weeks of school they were used much more often because we had more time for projects. Where I work students tend not to really follow the list anyways. Some will probably come in with tons of supplies that we didn't ask for (like crayons and markers) and some might not have enough of things we really need (like folders.)
