Rating My Amazon Purchases For My Classroom!

kind of an impulse buy because of tick tock this worked great from kindergarten through eighth grade purchase is kind of a dumb one oh this next purchase i [Music] love [Music] hi guys it's vanenda welcome back to my channel if you're new here hi my name is fernanda and i am a kinder and first grade teacher in today's video i'm going to be rating my amazon purchases that i've made this past school year so that way you don't have to waste your money like i did so quick little disclaimer this past school year i was only in the classroom for the first quarter and then quarters two three and four i was more what you would call a resource teacher so to pull out kids bring into my office and work with them so keep that in mind when i'm going over these purchases so yesterday i went through all of my amazon purchases for the school year and i screenshotted them all so we're not going from the beginning of the school year to the end we're actually going backwards so i hope you don't mind okay so this first purchase is student whiteboards and this purchase was not necessarily for the 2020 2021 school year i purchased this last school year but for next school year that makes sense so it's just a 25 pack of student whiteboards that it's double-sided i already have a pack like this i bought my second year of teaching my second year teaching i bought them because when i came into this new school i literally had nothing so i kind of needed them and then this time around i bought this pack because i kind of wanted to replace some of the other white boards that have been just i don't know worn and torn and damaged this purchase i would give a 7 out of 10 and the reason for that is because i really do like them and they are quite durable but i don't think they are completely necessary there are other ways that you can get a white board for students that's a lot cheaper for example you can just use dry erase leaves like these or even cheaper you can just have like a cardstock and put it in the sheet protector and call it a day i will also have everything that i'm mentioning in this video linked down below for you just in case you're interested okay so this next purchase is kind of a dumb one and they are assorted what are they called and they are assorted like fake gemstones and there is a back story to this so like i said this past school year i was a resource pull out teacher and i used to work with this sweet little boy who when i went to go pick him up he was so upset because he had lost his diamond in my diamond i mean like literally like a a rhinestone luckily i had like a few leftover gemstones from i don't even know what so i gave him one and he was like the happiest kid in the world knowing that he liked them and assuming that the younger kids that i worked with would also like them i bought this pack to put it in my prize box and i don't think i ever used them but maybe i will next year i mean i'm teaching kinder and first maybe they'll like them and if not we'll use them for like sorting and stuff like that so this purchase i would give a 5 out of 10. i think i had good intentions with this one but execution just wasn't great this next purchase are some color dot stickers and i bought these because i printed these like kid-friendly vocabulary terms for like math and language arts which is this right here i love this product but it comes with a lot of paper and it's kind of hard to keep track of it so i wanted these circle dot stickers to organize them so all of my math measurement and data like vocab words would be blue and i would put a sticker on the back of each one so that way once i was done with that vocabulary word on my wall and i wanted to put it away i knew where i would go these were fairly inexpensive so i would give these a 10 out of 10 because you can use them for so many different things so um i'm actually happy with this purchase this next purchase was laminating sheets so i bought these because i was laminating those vocabulary words that i talked about in the last purchase and they were a lot my school doesn't have your traditional like big laminating machine that has like a big role and you just you know what i'm talking about right we don't have that instead my school buys laminating pouches and we have like your standard like personal laminator and that's how we eliminate things but for whatever reason that week or like those few weeks we kept running out and i just decided to just buy them myself for me these weren't that expensive either and they were 200 pack they are definitely a lot cheaper than if you were to buy them like at walmart or target because i think they're for like 100 pack they're like 30 bucks i had never tried this brand before i ordered these but they work really well so i would give it a 7 out of 10. just because i could have been patient and just waited for the school to buy new ones but they did work pretty well and they were a good deal okay so this next one was kind of an impulse buy because of tick tock so these are decoding flash cards and i'll try to remember the tick tock that i saw it on if i don't like i kind of want to say something like the science of reading or something like that i love her when she comes on my for you page so basically what happened is she came on my new page i had a kid who i was working onto coding with and i bought these because she said they were good and they are good i wish i had them with me so i could show you but they are in a box in my classroom right now and i'm home but i like these because they are not like your typical like card stock material they're pretty thick so that would make them pretty durable and when i use them with the kids that i work with i felt like they were pretty effective and the kids enjoyed them so although it was an impulse buy i would give it a 10 out of 10. this next purchase goes along with the previous purchase because the previous purchase had more like blends and digest and stuff like that this purchase is more cbc based and again i bought it because of that tick tock and again i would give it a 10 out of 10. oh this next purchase i love so this one is a scratch-off sticker and because last year i didn't have a classroom instead i worked with different groups all across across all grade levels from kindergarten through eighth grade really wanted to find some kind of incentive system that would work from kindergarten all the way to eighth grade and what i found is a punch card system that looks like this i do have this template as a freebie on my tbt store and i'll have it linked down below so basically what i would do is i would print these and then the circle portion of the template i would write with a pencil like what the price would be so for example i could have put like a gemstone if i would have used those gemstones that i bought but i would also have things like chips because those would cater more to the to the older grade levels i have scrunchies i had fidgets had candy stuff like that i would write down with a pencil and then laminate it and then put the scratch-off sticker on top to cover the price i would go ahead and hole punch their card either one or two or three times depending on how well they did once they filled up their whole punch card i think it was 12 hole punches they would go ahead and get to scratch off their sticker and reveal their price and get a new punch card and honestly this worked great from kindergarten through eighth grade i was quite surprised but happy that it did so i would definitely give this a 15 15 out of 10. now let's just go ahead and do that 15 out of 10 because it's a great inexpensive way to do something exciting okay so this next purchase was for my price box to go along with the punch cards and they were among us water bottle stickers i don't know about you guys but among us was all the rage for a while at my school so why not hop onto that bandwagon and get some stickers to go into the prize box i actually had to buy this two times because the first time i think i had bought like some clothes hangers and then this at the same time in the same order and when the clothes hangers came alex just took out the clothes hangers and didn't check to see if there's anything else in the box and he threw the box away which he threw the stickers away luckily they were only like seven dollars so it wasn't that big of a deal but i did have to purchase them twice they weren't the best quality stickers i would say like i bought other stickers that were more like general um for the prize box and those stickers were more like glossy and seem more durable the manga stickers had more of a matte finish um and i just didn't think the quality was all there so i would give these a four out of ten okay so this next one was also to go along with my price box it's a 28 pack sensory toy fidget thing so what's cool about this is that it comes with 28 different fidgets which is great what's not cool about this oh i was gonna say that it was kind of pricey because remember being over 20 but now it's 15 so that's not that bad for 28 fidgets alex loves using fidgets when he's working in case you don't know alex is my husband so i did let him go through them and keep the ones that he wanted and then and then i put the rest of my prize box and the kids loved them so i would give this one a 8 out of 10 and the only reason i don't give it a 10 out of 10 is because i paid more back then than i would have now i love this next purchase and they are led light strips like i said i didn't have a typical classroom i had an office and then i had two even smaller offices inside my office so i put these led lights around my little mini white board it's about the size of this that was about the size of this bulletin board and then i also put them around my computer area and because my office had no windows whatsoever it was so dark and the lights just added something extra like it was low-key relaxing to be in there when the lights were off and the led lights were on if we were working on something more computer-based the kids would always beg for me to turn the lights off and have the led lights on which i would let them especially like these after a hard day like i would just turn the lights off in my office have those lights on put some calming taylor swift piano music and just try to decompress after a hard day and it was great so i would give these a 10 out of 10. all right this next purchase was to try to decorate one of my sub offices within my office little offices in my office were pretty small and also had no windows and then due to the paint color it kind of looked like an interrogation room like at a police station so in order to like try to lighten the mood in those offices because we would do like remote occupational therapy and remote counseling and stuff like that in those offices i went ahead and put these vines on one wall and then put and then put twinkle lights on another wall and stuff like that to try to make it more homey and more of like a treehouse feel and the kids really enjoyed that i did that i would give this purchase a 7 out of 10 because it did really help with making a space more warm and inviting okay so i'm gonna go ahead and go through one more purchase and then do a part two to this video because there is a lot of purchases so this next purchase is a colorful jenga set and i could have just bought the traditional django set and then painted it myself but this one was already painted it was fairly inexpensive for what it is so i bought this one instead and the reason for this is because again i worked with a wide range of students and grade levels so i needed something that was neutral that i could use with every single grade level so the way i would use this is i would have like maybe a sheet of problems that we were working on and color that were color coded according to the jenga set and um they would solve a problem and then if the problem was purple they would pull out a purple piece and so on and so forth and the kids loved it they were pretty engaged on working on their goals when we did it this way and it was really easy to differentiate the activity for different grade levels so i would give this purchase a 9 out of 10. the only reason i'm not giving it a 10 out of 10 is because the pieces are kind of slippery because they are like colored or painted on i don't know they're kind of slippery in comparison to the regular jenga scent so that is it for today's video i hope you guys enjoyed it and if you did please give this video a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and i will see you guys in my next video [Music] bye you

Channel: That One Happy Classroom

Views: 5,659

Rating: 4.9352226 out of 5

Keywords: Teacher, Teacher Vlog, A Day in the Life of a Teacher

Id: tnnbSLFyKPI

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021