40 Bags in 40 Days Fridays!

Friday?! Wow, what happened with the week! It's been a brutal week of heat, storms and fun lol! I have tackled 5 more rooms and this time I went over the garbage bag limit, so I started filling Rubbermaid bins and such! The Bathrooms didn't furnish as much as I had hoped, since we don't keep too much in them. I was able to fill the bags with shower curtains though and old bath toys. It was pretty easy to get organized there. The garage offered some resistance, but the best part is that my husband wanted to deal with that! hahah! 

He's awesome because as I sent stuff down, he was photographing it, to make listing it on craigslist so easy. Before the week was up, we have sold everything that we listed and have 3 big bins and boxes heading to the Goodwill tomorrow! Check out my list of cleaning places HERE. I have a more challenging week ahead of me, as I want to get my bedroom done along with a few other difficult clutter spots, like my studio! YIKES!

How have you moved towards a clutter-free lifestyle?

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Thrift Stop!

After writing this post on thrifty teaching aids:

http://michellescharmworld.blogspot.com/2011/03/thrifty-teaching-aids.html ,

I have gotten many e-mails, to keep updating my fun buys! Remember that you don't have to go to a specific charity shop, just go into one! I for one can be a total store snob, I admit it, but thrifting is FUN! There are so many treasures you can unearth and believe me, I've often times found new in box toys and books and game sets that are perfect for lessons or inspire new ones. 

Today, I ran in just to do a quick check at the local Goodwill (snob about to come out here). I cannot stand this Goodwill and if I were the company I would invest in making it as nice as the others I have been to (every single other one) AND be more careful about what they put on the shelves (stained items, torn items, broken stuff etc.) The minute you walk into this one, you just get that ick feeling, BUT I figured I will give it a shot, since I struck out at my 2 other local stops.Go figure I found some great stuff!! 

I did take the time today to write them a customer note on their website with my receipt information, so hopefully that will help somewhat! haha!!On to the good stuff!

Goodnight Moon is HUGE, it's the Lap Size for the classroom and perfect for all 3 kids to see while I read at bedtime! The Vintage Clock is a puzzle too! This is going to be very helpful in teaching Roman the Time basics and we can also use the numbers in different games too! My favorite purchase was the magnetic Pattern Blocks and Book, these were in a ziploc freezer bag, so I put them in the red pouch to make it more portable. I then dug through my supplies and found a cute little iron on to pop onto the pouch to make it cute and my youngest son fell in love! 

I took an iron on patch that I had in my supplies and put it right on this drawstring bag I had and now this little set looks good as new and Roman has already started carrying it everywhere to play!

Goodnight Moon .79

Magnetic Blocks and Book .99

Clock .99

Total spent today under 3.00!!!

Thrifty Teaching Aids!

We LOVE board games at my house, but if your kids are like mine, the small pieces tend to wander off and get lost in that big black hole of nowhere! I Love to swing by the Goodwill and pick up any games that have small pieces that we go through like crazy! It's a super inexpensive way to build up extra pieces! As far as the game boards and extra pieces, we use many in crafts and others we just recycle if the local daycare doesn't need them!

This post is about thrifty teaching aids though! My kids are all at different stages in learning, but I find that if I get creative, I can use 1 tool many different ways! This week I stopped at the Goodwill with a purpose! I needed some letter tiles and I couldn't use Scrabble ones, because I go though those like crazy in my shop! As I strolled the game aisle, I found exactly what I was looking for! I picked up 3 games for less than 5.00 total with tax and had exactly what I wanted! Boggle Junior, UpWords and Quip Qubes! These games are some of our favorites to play normally, so I was able to replenish the games we had and still have loads and loads leftover for

our learning games!
With the letter dice from the boggle game, I love to use these by tossing them in my purse with a notepad and pencil. They toss 1 of the die and then they figure out how many words they can come up with (My daughter writes them down and my son just says them). It's a fun game to play at a restaurant when meals get too long or when waiting in line for something etc. The UpWords we use to spell normal words and sentences and then try to change the words up just like the game goes, only using sentences! We use them all for other fun stuff too!!
I had purchased these yellow teaching tiles before (at the Goodwill of course!!) and even though I got them for only .99, they sell for so much more money than that, if i ever wanted to replenish them! I knew I had to get creative!
I found this freezer bin at the goodwill for .99 and it was perfect to hold all our letter tiles! It gives the kids easy access to them and allows me to keep an eye on them too! This is one of their favorite tools for spelling!
I used the cards from the Boggle Jr. Game and put them on a binder ring, so that my younger two can flip through and spell the words they see! Perfect way to get them spelling and playing with words!!
My favorite find was the Qube game! It had all these cubes in it and they all have words on each and every side!! These are AWESOME for sentence building and also just popping in between words we make with the tiles! I sometimes have my daughter grab 4 of them and toss them and see what kind of sentence she can come up with!

Keep your eyes open and get creative!!!