My favorite purchases!!

My name is Caitlyn. And I have a TeachersPayTeachers addiction.

I have downloaded many items from TpT and today I want to feature some of my favorite purchases from various sellers on TeachersPayTeachers and Teachers Notebook.

1. Yearly Binder from Little Lovely Leaders
My goal this year was to be more organized. This binder is severely underpriced for its worth. It really includes three different binders and all the cover pages and inserts you would need to have a Yearly Binder, Parent Contact Binder, Sub Information Binder and Student Information Binder. Not only does it include all the pages you would need for these binders, all the pages are super adorable in chevron and super colorful!!
Can I just say that I love everything by Little Lovely Leaders? I featured her Math Alphabet freebie in another one of my blog posts. Check it out {here}




2. Classroom Supply Labels in Chevron
I am obsessed with anything chevron this year. So I bought these the second I saw them. She has tons of different supplies on here (sharpened pencils and unsharpened pencils to dry erase boards and dry erase board markers) but she also provides four blank signs for you to customize. This purchase was a no-brainer!!




3. Place Value Through the Millions
I got this place value set from Layla at Fancy Free in Fourth. For the third, fourth and fifth grade teachers teaching place value, this is so worth it! There are so many activities included in this packet from I have, Who has to a Place Value Dice Game. It also has all the place value vocabulary words for your word wall! Check it out by clicking one of the two photos below. You can also see her blog post about it {here}.

This is my favorite activity from the pack. I used it for morning work every day last week with a different number!

4. Chevron Name Tags
Ok, so every year I buy cute name tags and they're destroyed by November and then I have to go out and buy more. So I got smart this year and purchased these off of Teachers Notebook. Now every time they get destroyed, I can print out a new set!! Brilliant, right?? And they were only $2 which is so much less than the name tags at my local teacher store. Most importantly, they are so CUTE! And in chevron.




5. Memory Games from Danielle at Scrappy Teaching in Florida!
I have two of Danielle's memory games right now- the Prefix and Suffix matching games. I just got them and I am so excited to use them during centers. They are color coded and are going to be great for the kiddos to work with independently. She has a ton of other products and a lot of other great matching games.. idioms, homophones, cause and effect, etc. You should definitely follow here TpT page {here}.





So go ahead and add all of these products to your wishlist and follow these teachers' TpT and Teachers Notebook pages. Enjoy!

Product Giveaway! & Favorite Freebie!

I recently blogged about how I opened up a Teacher's Notebook store! I am super excited about having a TN store and have decided to host a giveaway.

My first giveaway is for my class schedule cards. If you're interested, all you have to do click to enter this giveaway. Teacher's Notebook will automatically pick 3 winners on September 15th!


In other news... I am ready to go back to school tomorrow because I had such a great weekend. Isn't it nice when your weekend is perfectly refreshing? I'm about to have a pizza and movie night too. My idea of a perfect Sunday night, except it's Monday, which means we only have four days until the next weekend!!

Back to School night is on Thursday so I'll be meeting parents and giving a presentation. I already have my outfit for that night :)

One thing that I'm super thankful for this year is the Math Alphabet signs that Bridget at Little Lovely Leaders created. I cannot believe that these signs are free! These are perfect for the upper grades.. they feature the vocabulary in our curriculum in fourth grade math perfectly and they are so much cuter and much more useful than the cursive alphabet I had hanging above my front board all year last year.

For example, B says "B.. Bar Graph"

Here is the beginning of the math alphabet in my classroom that I posted on our front wall.

So super cute, right?!

Grab your Math Alphabet freebie {HERE}

Teachers Pay Teachers vs. Teachers Notebook

I have been on TpT for a while now and I am loving it. I can post the materials I make for my classroom to share with other teachers. I love how the world of teaching has evolved into a such a sharing environment and I am so thankful that websites like Teachers Pay Teachers are allowing us to do this.

Now, I haven't yet purchased the premium membership for TpT. I am not making thousands of dollars through TpT, so I can't decide if this would be worth it. But I have been contemplating becoming a selling member over at Teacher's Notebook. After a morning spent researching, I have decided to pay the $20 to set up a Teacher's Notebook lifetime seller membership. Here are the pro's and con's of each site as I have gathered from my research:



Teacher's Pay Teachers-
-Free to buy and sell under the non-premium memberships
-More traffic than Teacher's Notebook

Teacher's Notebook-
-Sellers get 100% of their sales immediately (minus PayPal fees)

Because I get more back as a seller, I am going to make my TN products cheaper! So I feel that this is a win-win for buyers and sellers of my store. You can find my Teacher's Notebook store here:



Remember, it's free to sign up as a buyer!

I will keep you all updated about how my membership through Teacher's Notebook goes. Anyone else have feedback about a preference for TN or TpT? I would love to add your thoughts to this blog post, so opinions are welcome!




If you'd like to sign up to Teachers Pay Teachers, click here:

UPDATE: Teachers Notebook has changed their policies since this was originally posted in 2012.

Please read this comment from this post (original comment below) from a representative from Teacher's Notebook-

"Hi there all:

Full disclosure, I am writing as a representative of Teachers Notebook, in hopes of clarifying. Jennifer, above is correct. Teachers Notebook made some big changes in January to last year's pricing model. You can now open a free shop, and everything is completely free. You take home 75% of your sales minus a 30 cent transaction fee.

Or you can choose to upgrade to a premium shop at anytime. You pay a one-time $49.95 fee, but you bring home more in sales profits -- 90% mins a $.15 transaction fee.

We usually recommend starting with a free shop and upgrading when you feel you are making enough sales to justify the $49.95 fee. Or if you are already confident in your sales on other sites and your materials, then start with the premium shop, because your take home profit is higher than on a free shop.

If you are considering the time involved in trying Teachers Notebook, our customer service is hands on -- we can advise you where to start, based on what kind of products we know sell well, and based on knowledge of our inventory. We are very sensitive to your time, and pride ourselves on reaching out to help new shop-authors maximize their time to make sales

Sorry for the marketing. Just wanted to clarify how Teachers Notebook works now in 2013. We also have video tips, clipart and other really cool new tools. Check us out!

--Ryan"