Must Haves {Monday} #babyimworthit

Maybe you heard, maybe you didn't, but I am so excited to be joining the lovely ladies of Freebielicious to bring you an awesome week long linky party! Each day the topic will be different and WE want YOU to join us! Just write a post on the topic and link your blog post to the linky over at Freebielicious each day the post there goes live! I always find new blogs during linky's like this-- can't wait to see who I meet! 

Obviously as you just read in that super large picture today is all about classroom must haves! I've already found a new item I want to try out from Lidia's post on the Freebielicious blog-- hello awesome stapler! 

When I thought about my classroom must haves I wanted to list the things that I couldn't possibly imagine running my classroom without. We all love our flair pens and our fancy planners, but I wanted to go deeper. What would truly make me fall to my knees and crumble if you told me I couldn't have them in my classroom anymore? 

Pretty sure I have blogged about these before. I use them everywhere! When the students first enter the classroom they remove a letter link name tag from the door, we print them on sticker labels so anywhere we need to put the child's name we can use the letter links-- on their cubbies, folders, table spots, etc. We use them on our song book, job charts, for our Hello Song, when it's time to line up- literally every thing. If my admin came to me and said they could no longer afford the license for us to keep using them I would totally be making my own. It would be more time consuming, but worth it! #babyimworthit (Fifth Harmony song anyone?)

If you work with me you know just how obsessed I am with containers. They are invaluable to any teacher. We have bins and buckets out the wa-zoo in our classroom. I would be devastated to lose any of them, but these specifically affect teaching. We use the small shoe box size Sterilite containers for task boxes. The medium size Sterilite containers are each marked by highly preferred character toys for students to make picture exchanges to have them or work to earn for them. The largest containers I keep above our cabinets to store all of my theme stuff in. (That blog post will show you what it looks like if you're interested) 

I also specified that I purchase the Sterilite brand specifically for these containers. Yes they cost a little bit more but they are, again, worth it. #babyimworthit The shoe containers from dollar tree don't have lids that latch real great so the kids tend to frequently spill what's in the buckets. And actually, the shoe containers are under $1 at WalMart! 

And last, but not least...

As a special education teacher of mostly students with autism this is sort of a no brainer for me. You can't take this resource out of my room. I also use Pics for PECS a lot, but they offer more of a variety of images for items, where as Boardmaker has items and a lot more verbs, etc. Version 14 of Pics for PECS just came out and that's what I linked you to above if you want to check it out. I actually have a lot of people ask me where my pictures came from when I show something made with their images. Boardmaker is a little more iconic with their "egg heads" as I call them :) 

I also splurged about 2 years ago and bought my own copy of Boardmaker Plus to have at home. I bought it during a sale they were having because it is not a cheap program. But it's so nice to have the option to work on things from home and not have to stay late at school JUST to use Boardmaker. Again, #babyimworthit 

If you had to pick three classroom must haves what would they be? Link up! Write your post and head over the Freebielicious to add your post to the link up! Can't wait to read more posts and find out what I didn't know I needed in my classroom.