Gratitude for Donorschoose

I know many educators already know about Donorschoose-but just in case you need some motivation to post to project! :) I have had great luck with their site-it always amazes me how generous people can be!

If you've never posted before it's uber-easy. All you have to do is start with a catchy title. Then you go shopping (that's the fun part!). I try to keep my shopping cart below $300 because they will add fees that will take it over $400 and I think sometimes smaller projects are easier to get filled. Then you just write about your kids and why you need these resources. 

Lots of people ask for technology-but that can get really expensive quickly and I like my projects to stand out from the pack. I get all my workstation materials (people make fun of the variety of different counters I have for math :), my art supplies, books for my student book club and my classroom through these donations. My all-time favorite was a request for materials in our housekeeping centers (I had the furniture, just nothing for them to play with). The last day it was viable was Christmas Eve and a stranger funded it that day saying "Merry Christmas-this is something I belive in". How cool is that!

When you get funded the only thing you have to do is have the kids make thank you cards, take pics of the resources being used and write a thank you yourself-totally worth it! If you don't get funded, please don't get discouraged. It's happened to me too. Now they will refund you your points and you can start again. They track gifts by school and our school has been blessed with $35,000 in materials since 2008! 22 different teachers have had their projects funded, I've had over 25 myself. Check out the page in your area-often businesses will fund half or even sometimes the whole thing if it fits their requirements. The 3 times a year I make sure I have one posted are Teacher Appreciation Week, Back-to-School and Christmas-times I think people are feeling generous towards teachers!

These are terrible pics, but these are the latest thank-you cards my kiddos made: