"School's Out for the Summer"

I know school has been out for about a week and a half, but the day after school got out, I flew to Utah, and wasn't able to post.
Near the end of school, I greatly anticipated summer break, mostly because my students were driving me crazy! I think everyone was ready for the summer break, especially when the weather got to be a little nicer there near the end.
This year in my Language Arts class, I tried to use a lot of hands on activities and art type projects. I spent quite a bit of money buying markers, crayons, and colored pencils. On the last day of school, the students cleaned out their lockers. As I was watching them, I noticed they were throwing away perfectly working markers and colored pencils. I quickly put a box next to the garbage can and announced if they were going to throw away art supplies and other nice school supplies to put them in the box rather than the garbage can.
As my box started to fill, I must admit I was shocked. They were throwing away unopened packages of filler paper, unopened notebooks, crayons, markers, pencils, colored pencils, and binder. I got brand new highlighters, new sharpies, and lots of dry erase markers. (Which I also purchased a lot of). I ended up bringing three boxes home, and I sorted it in piles.



Here is a picture of all my goods. Instead of buying new school supplies this year, I bought sturdy containers for all the school supplies my students supplied. Hey! If they mostly used my supplies this year, they can use their own next year. I ended the school year with more supplies than I started with, and you really can't beat that!