New Stuff for a New Year!

 I went to a teacher supply store yesterday, and spent about $40 on teachery things. This is one of my favorite things to do, and I was able to find some things that I needed or just wanted for my current music therapy classroom. Here's a description of my haul:

Music Basics large poster set: I have several walls in my music therapy room that could be used for incidental music notation and theory learning. This poster set will help with that. It has three pieces that specifically cover staff notation - something I cannot seem to teach my students to understand. I think I may put it on the Word Wall - Velcroed to the wall because my students seem to lose interest in pulling things off the wall when they are Velcroed rather than taped or stapled...
 
Dry Erase board erasers - These are my favorite dry erasers and they were on sale! I can't find these any place where I am, so I tend to purchase them when I can! I bought three!! Three! I like these because they last me much longer than one-ply erasers do - when the felt becomes saturated, I pull off the top layer. Then I have a completely clean layer to use. The used felt can be washed and made into smaller dry erase board erasers. I was very excited to see them in the clearance aisle yesterday morning. 

Labels and stickers - I needed some new monkey stickers because I used a bunch for a file folder writing activity for a small friend of mine, and I love the cheeky monkeys that are on these labels!! I also picked up some star labels that will go well in my music therapy room, some snowflakes (just because), and some small die-cuts with a wintery theme for the upcoming cold and snowy months. They will serve as inspiration for me as I am writing new therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) and slogging through the ice and snow that happens around my environment. In my opinion, if you are a file folder visual aid maker, NOTHING beats cute nametag stickers for folder decoration. They are easy to use, cute as all get out, and make things look so much more professional than my hand-drawn doodles. So, I am constantly collecting stickers to use for my students' visual aids and TMEs. I'm thinking another set of monkey stickers would be good - I have a "Monkey See, Monkey Do" TME that talks about not doing what others do that could use some visuals!!

I also spent about $20 on Teachers Pay Teachers yesterday. I also spent about 2 hours looking at things and downloading free materials from TPT as well. It was quite a productive morning.

Here's a list of the Teachers Pay Teachers stores that I like (not in any kind of order):

• AllMusicalMatters
• Marina's Little People
• Dancing Crayon Designs
• HardPlayed
• Elements of Elementary
• Mrs Breyne
• The Bulletin Board Lady - Tracy King
• David Row at Make Moments Matter
• MusicTeacherResources
• Mrs.R
• SingToKids
• Stephanie Morris
• Stucki Education Station
• Cori Bloom
• RayLee's Schoolhouse

Please know that I do not have any sort of affiliate relationship - I do not get paid for recommending products, vendors, or services at all. I doubt I will ever do anything like that. So, if I recommend or list something on this blog, it is something that I use with my clients. It's just that simple.

Many of the resources that I have in my library are free, but I do purchase files that seem to be relevant to what I do with my clients. There aren't many folks identified as music therapists on TPT, but there are some of us out there in the digital world. You can find my store here. Things are usually pretty inexpensive (sometimes even FREE), and you can find lots of files for emotion cards or bullying themed worksheets, songs, visual aids, etc. If you go in with limited ideas of what you really need, though, you can get sucked into the void of possibilities. It's hard to come back out again. For my two hours of browsing yesterday, though, I came out with 17 new files (and one set of music themed clip art that I will be using SO MUCH in the next couple of days for my own TPT files!!), and I only spent around $20. I find that to be a good use of my resources.

It is now time to figure out what I am going to do with all of these new things. I will spend some time with my computer and my TME format and figure out some specific therapeutic uses for all of these new files, materials, and visuals. I suspect that I will have many new ideas in just a little bit of time...Write them down, Mary Jane, write them DOWN! It's time to start.

Find some happiness in what you do today, okay??