CURRENT CLASSROOM FAVORITES | Flair Pens Dupe?!

hello there and welcome back to my channel if you don't know me my name is Michelle 4a and I'm a fourth grade teacher in Maryland a year ago I started filming these classroom favorites videos where I share things that I have purchased on Amazon because I have a serious problem and I figured if I'm going to be purchasing many things from Amazon and I truly like them I might as well share them with you all so you can purchase them too if you have no willpower like me so that's exactly what I'm going to do today I'm going to share with you five recent purchases I have made on Amazon for my classroom that I have truly loved [Music] so if you have been following me for a long time you know that I really like pens specifically colorful pens I have an entire caddy that is on my desk full of different pens it's kind of a problem but my favorite pen of all of them is the papermate Flair head I love the way that it writes the colors are all super vibrant but there is one issue if you're a teacher ballin on a budget those pens are pretty expensive but today I am going to share with you a fantastic dupe for the papermate Flair pens and those are the amazon hold on I have to read it from the screen because I literally can't remember this amazonbasics felt-tip markers which are basically flare pens but from Amazon and a lot cheaper these are eight dollars and fifty cents for a 12-pack at least at the time I'm filming this video okay amazon loves to change things up so if the price changes don't come crying to me it's not my fault blame the Amazon but papermate Flair pens for its ball pad usually run about twelve dollars at the cheapest sometimes it can be even more and that is about a 30% savings as you can see the design is very similar it has the full color plastic on the outside and it does have a metal clip they look basically the same as pure pens and the colors aren't just as vibrant as flare pens now I'm gonna go ahead and do kind of a side-by-side comparison that way you can see exactly how the colors compare for the most part they're right on the money however there are two colors that just don't live up to what the flare pens look like the first one is the yellow it's not that it doesn't live up to a clear pen it's just a different color yellow this is very much like what I picture a sunshine yellow color beam where is the flare pens they come out more of a golden color so it really just depends what you're looking for now the magenta color on the other hand I will say this is the only pen I am waited in it just does not come out I submit down to color it truly looks like a light purple in fact when you write with it it looks pretty much the same color as this one I don't notice a big difference there so I will say this one kind of a loss but the rest of them all compare very very closely to the flare pens what I love about these pens in general is they do not smear on the paper they dry like that so if your hand runs over it you don't have to worry about it you know messing up your page they also are very good at not bleeding through the paper unless the paper super thin but if the paper is super thin pretty much any pen is gonna bleed through but the flare pens as a whole do a really good job of not bleeding through and so do these I will say one negative about these is that you can only purchase them in either a 12 pack or a 24 pack on Amazon where is the flare pens they come in all these different like combinations and you can even buy them by the single color in like a multi pack of like 12 black ones or 12 blue ones you get the point these ones however do not have that option yet but you know Amazon if you're watching this you should consider that because I would buy a 12-pack of these black ones and hop in it another purchase I made recently that I am loving are these numbered carpet spots so these have been around for a long time I tried to remember the original like brand that came up with them I can't remember off the top of my head if you know leave a tell in the comments but now there's tons of companies that make these they are essentially these little like nylon e circles and they have like hook and loop fasteners girl but technically velcro is like the brand name and this is a belt or so hook and loop fasteners on the back that allowed him to adhere to carpet now teachers traditionally use these to mark spots on the carpet for students to sit on and honestly I've never had a need for it when I switched over to fourth grade I never really brought my students to the carpet because my old room was too small I couldn't fit them all up there but now I'm teaching reading the way that our curriculum is structured I do need to have them on the carpet for our read aloud and the I do and we do portions of the lesson and I will say you know at first it was all hunky-dory we were like one big family and my kids didn't have a problem sitting on the carpet but now you know it's a little bit later in the year and suddenly my kids don't want to sit on the carpet or they're not sitting exactly where they should be or they're like spread out lounging and it's just not working so I needed to go ahead and invest in some of these what I really like though about these ones is not only are they different colors so there are six colors pink red orange yellow green and blue each one of the colors has six dot or six yeah that's six circles and they are also numbered so numbers one through six are blue and then seven through twelve are green and so on and so on and I absolutely love the numbers because my students are each assigned a number and this makes it that much easier for them to find their spot now these run about four inches wide just in case you're wondering about measurements and they can easily be moved around so once you put it on the carpet you can just tear it off move it somewhere else which for me works out really well because my students come to the carpet for reading instruction and I want to be equitable so I actually rotate the rows once a month so basically at the start of a new month whoever was currently sitting in the second row moves up to the first row whoever was in the third row moves up to the second row and so on and whoever was in the first row goes to the back that way they're constantly in a new spot so at the end of the month I easily just rip these up and move them up row to the new spot that that student will be sitting another thing that I love about these is you can actually vacuum right over top of them you don't have to take them up if you're gonna vacuum your carpet the custodians vacuumed my carpet nights of the week and they're able to vacuum right over top of these with no problem now the problem is these exact ones that I got currently sold out but I will link another one that looks basically identical because if you go into Amazon there's like a million of these I picked these because they had really good reviews they had the different colors and they were numbered so I will find another comparable one that also has good reviews and I will link that one for you instead I totally just realized I never told you the price these specific ones were about thirteen dollars which 436 of them is a steal okay moving on the next thing I wanted to share with you is a custom stamp can I just say that this little sucker right here has been a game changer it's one of those things that I have no idea why I didn't purchase sooner because truly like I have no words but it's wonderful this is the excel mark brand which I just have always heard good things about so I trusted it and this is a customizable stamp now this particular one only allows you to put in one line of text that's up to 25 characters long but there are a ton of other options that allow you to have up to like seven lines of text I think was the one that I saw that was the biggest so you can definitely get more text if needed now this ran about $10 including the customization that is a part of it it comes in 11 different colors and there's like 8 different fonts I think that you can choose from I take that back 18 fonts not eight months now the actual stamp size is 9/16 of an inch by an inch and a half so just a little bit bigger than 1/2 an inch tall and then it's an inch and a half long one of the things that I love about this stamp is that it is self inking I don't have to have a separate ink pad I literally push down on it and it stamps and then it folds itself back up so I don't have to worry about it drying out now this also has a double-sided ink pad so you're actually able to remove the ink pad flip it over reinsert it for double the length of time to be able to use it which come on you're getting your money's worth when that ink pad does finally die it is replaceable so instead of getting a whole new stamp you can just get a new ink pad or you can even drink the ink pad that is already in it now so far I've only created myself one stamp but I have so many ideas in my head a future stamps I'm putting to create this one actually says possible redo we do have a redo policy that sounded kind of weird we do have a redo policy but students who earn less than a 70% on an assignment are able to redo it to improve their score and they can redo up to 3 assignments per subject area per marking period which is a lot and I was personally writing possible redo on every paper that a student could possibly redo so if they got below a 70% I would write that on there and while it doesn't seem like a big deal to just write possible redo after doing that for months and months hun and it's really sucking a lot of my time so I thought there has to be an easier way I'm sure I could make a stamp that already says possible redo so all I have to do is stamp the paper instead of writing it now here already are the other ways I'm thinking about using this I want to create one that has my last name on it so I can stamp it in books for my library instead of handwriting my last name in the library book but I'm gonna wait you know until my last name changes this October and then I will get a stamp with my new last name which will be Emerson another way I thought about using this is to get one that actually has the two different areas of math that we grade so we grade on computational skills and we grade on problem solving and sometimes I will take one assignment and I will get students a computational skills grade and a problem-solving grade and in order to communicate that with parents I would have to write like computational skills problem-solving and that was a huge time waster so I could actually create a stamp I could get one that has two lines I could have one line say computational skills and one line say problem-solving so I could just stamp it on the page and then write the grade next to it I also thought that these would be fantastic for special educators personally I have to special educators that work in my room and I know that they're always writing accommodations that the students used on that actual paper but I thought they could use one of these stamps maybe one of the ones that has seven lines on it and they can have it be almost just like checkboxes so we could have all the possible accommodations that that student has they stamp it and then they can just check off the ones that the student use my mind is just like come on why didn't I think of this sooner as a teacher I just think that my time is one of my most valuable resources so any little gadget that can save me some time is well worth the 10 dollars in my opinion the next item I have is this storage clipboard which was about eleven dollars now I got mine in black because that is my favorite color but it does also come in pink and teal so this is like a regular clipboard but way better because first of all it does have this little groove at the bottom to be able to hold a pen or a pencil which I just love but it also unclips at the bottom opens up and has storage on the inside come on personally I feel like anytime I go to a meeting I'm always bringing papers to grade and a pen to be able to grade them with and I feel like I'm just carrying all this stuff and then it starts falling out but with this I could actually put the papers I'm going to grade on the inside along with a pen I could even fit a notebook in there and then it's all in one place I do love that it's not super thick because I have seen some clipboard cases like this that are pretty chunky and it would be like a good two inches thick this one I would say is about an inch thick which is just really really good there's a hair on the back I'm sorry especially because I use clipboards for clipboard crazy which is a way for me to take anecdotal notes of students as a form of formative assessment during instruction so if a student's working on a problem I jot down notes on how they're doing and whether they need reteaching or whether they're ready for enrichment and along with that because I usually have a checklist and I would put it on a clipboard I usually I'm also carrying extra papers that I can use to help out my students and scaffold them so things like graphic organizers if we're working on a particular word problem and they're struggling with it I can give them an organizer to help them be able to make their learning visible I also will carry along like challenge problems so if a student is ready for enrichment I can just quickly slip it to them but the problem is on one clipboard that gets really difficult to manage so with this I could actually have my little checklist and my anecdotal notes on the front and then on the inside I can keep those extra papers so I can easily grab them if and when needed I do feel like the plastic is pretty durable I mean so far so good like I haven't had any problems the clip is nice and secure and it doesn't feel too cheap so well worth the eleven dollars my last item is actually a pair of pants and I get it they're technically not for my classroom but I wear them in my classroom so I'm including them so let's talk about pants real quick I wear skirts to work a lot just because I feel more loose in them and I feel more comfortable however in the wintertime when it's like 20 degrees outside they're not the best clothing options so I did need to invest in some pants but for me I always find it very difficult to find pants that fit my quads and just legs in general are very muscular so whenever the pants are tight around there they're super loose and my waist and it just has never been a fun experience trying to shop for pants but I went on Amazon and I said there has to be a solution and I saw these and I just thought first of all they're adorable I love the little kind of ruffle detail at the top I love the little bow and these are actually a crop length so they're made to fit you know up above your ankles but for me being 5 foot 3 they fit like normal pants but what I really love about these is the material it's nice and stretchy so they're very comfortable sometimes you wear stretchy pants it's for fun and they're high-waisted they fit up above your hips which as a teacher when you're constantly sitting down and sometimes even on the floor I it's worried about things that are not high-waisted because you know it starts creeping down to places you don't want it to creep down but these they stay up nice and high and I never have to worry about being uncomfortable or making someone else uncomfortable it's just a win-win now this little belt here is removable but I think it looks kind of weird without the belt so personally I would only wear it with the belt but when I'm washing it I don't wash the belt every time there's not really a need for it so I will just hang it in my closet wash the pants and then reattach the belt and I wash the belt like every other time these do come in 15 colors I personally have already purchased four of the colors I have wine light blue light gray and charcoal gray which is this color they also range in sizes from extra small to three XL so they have a very wide size range which I like I have no idea what size I have one I personally wear a small and they are tighter fitting around my legs but they still fit well enough that I don't feel like I'm constricted and then around the waist because it is an elastic waistband it fits really well they do have pockets now they're not like the best pockets ever when you put your phone in it it looks kind of weird because it's like right on the front of your leg and especially if it fits tighter around your leg it just looks weird and I will say that they do get kind of wrinkly you can probably see that here but then you know if you look at my shirt I don't really care about things being wrinkly okay my clothes get wrinkly all the time but I will say I use a clothing steamer instead of an iron because I hate ironing and it takes out the wrinkles like that one final note about these pants the way that they fit kind of forces you to tuck your shirt in because it just looks weird if you don't because of the like little you know ruffled waistband and the bow if your shirt goes over top it makes you look kind of lumpy in that area so I personally like to wear tops that are kind of tighter fitting that I can easily tuck in I will actually link below a blacktop that I like to wear and it kind of has like these bell sleeves and it's very tight-fitting around the body and it comes in different colors so if you are interested in that top to wear with this I will link that for you in the description box now if you made it this far in the video congratulations I appreciate you and to show my appreciation we're gonna have a little giveaway okay and people who clicked off the video will have no clue about this I'm gonna give away a $50 Amazon gift card so you can go and you know purchase these goodies or any other goodies you want to get from Amazon all you need to do to enter is subscribe to my channel give this video a thumbs up and then leave a comment down below on which of these five items you are most excited about I will respond to the winners comment exactly one week after this video goes live so make sure that you check back or check your email however it is that you get notified that I responded to your comment go ahead and give this video a thumbs up and subscribe because those are the first two steps of the giveaway leave your comment down below because it only takes a couple of seconds and until next time thank you so much for watching I love you so much don't forget to put your positive PS on and I will catch you in the next one thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this video and for supporting my youtube channel if you want to check out any of my older videos you can use the two links right down here if you want to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future videos you can use like right up here the links to all of my social media sites my teachers pay teacher's store my merchandise store and my amazon store are in the description box and I'll catch you guys in the next one

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 100,384

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, classroom favorites, teacher favorites, amazon favorites, amazon favorites for teachers, amazon favorites for teachers 2020

Id: Q6mSZfC3yKs

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 23 2020