Back to School With Erin Condren: Simply Beautiful Teacher Tools
When I was asked by erincondren.com if I would be interested in reviewing and getting a sneak peek at their newest school supply line for teachers, the word thrilled does not even adequately explain how excited I was! I have always loved her simple approach to organization and the beautiful artwork that goes into each and every piece. When I sat down to open up my box of goodies, I felt like a four year old on Christmas morning! As a teacher, organization is essential. As a teacher who adores color, quotes, and cuteness, I knew the new Erin Condren line would definitely not disappoint. In this post, I’m going to give you a closer look at all of these beautiful teacher tools for your lesson planning, meetings, and classroom. If you’re like me, you love shopping online but you wish so badly that you could see MORE of what you’re wanting to order! I really think you’ll love taking a look at the photographs for all of these different items. I’ll explain how I plan to use the items and I even have an affiliate link at the bottom of this post that will give you $10 off of your first Erin Condren order! Yay! Let’s take a close look at some of the new, beautiful items:
Journals
Aren’t these journals adorable?! I love them because they are slim and would fit nicely into my purse on an inservice day. I also think these journals are the perfect size to keep beside your classroom phone, and used as your phone log for the year. Last year, anytime I called or received a call from a parent of a student, I recorded the date, time, and details of the conversation. This is always a nice way to make sure you are on the same page with your families. It’s also just a great idea to make sure you are keeping in touch with all of your students’ families. (I’m also pretty in love with those adorable erasers and pencils, too!)
Lunch Tote
When this personalized lunch tote arrived with the same pattern as my Life Planner cover, I squealed! I’m loving the watercolor patterns from Erin Condren this year! The lunch tote is on the smaller side, but I actually adore it because of that. I am someone who does not typically pack a full lunch for school. Rather, I’ll throw random snacks into my bag and I tend to snack at school instead of eating one lunch meal. This is the perfect size for your snacks and a bottle of water! The smaller size also means it will not take up much room in your teacher tote. It zips and is stain resistant. I also love that it folds flat when it is empty. You can personalize it so that everyone in the teacher lounge knows it is yours, and it comes in a ton of beautiful designs!
Notebooks
I purchased the above 8.5″ by 11″ notebook for the Teachers Pay Teachers conference in Orlando. It is SO beautiful, that I had to include it in this post! Every year, I purchase a larger notebook and use it as my “ideas” notebook. Whenever I come up with an idea for school, a lesson plan, a blog post – whatever it is, the idea goes into my notebook. It is usually a MESS by the end of the year, but when an idea hits me, I don’t have time to “organize” it. My main goal is to get it out of my head and onto the paper – and a beautiful notebook helps me do it with style! Plus, are you not in LOVE with the rose gold coil I chose?!
In the photograph below, I started to jot down an idea in my notebook, and I used the list feature on the right hand side of the page to list what I needed to purchase for my new idea.
Sticky Storage Pockets
Okay, friends. These are honestly one of my favorite things ever for my Life Planner and Notebooks! They are little sticky storage pockets that you can adhere anywhere in your planner or notebook that you would like. I’m always, always losing receipts and little notes that are falling out of my books. Well, not anymore!
Check out how easy and FUN these little pockets are:
After you peel off the 3M backing, you simply stick it into your notebook or planner. I like to put one on the inside cover of all of my books. Look how perfectly these pockets hold little notes and business cards:
Compliment Cards
Compliment Cards are the BEST! They are the perfect, cutest way to spread positivity to your teammates and the staff within your school building. These adorable cards already have printed positive statements such as, “Smile you are beautiful,” and “You are one of a kind.” Wouldn’t you love to walk into your classroom one morning and find one of these Compliment Cards on your desk from a teammate? If you are a grade level leader, administrator, or just a teacher who loves to make those in your building smile, you need to stick these cute cards in your teacher tote bag and pass them out like candy! As you can see in the photograph below, I have already snuck a Compliment Card into my husband’s bag. I can’t wait for him to see it tomorrow morning when he gets to the office!
7″ by 9″ Notebook
Are you reading this closely? Because I’m about to share an idea with you that is going to CHANGE the way you organize yourself with building and district committees this school year! If you’re like me, you always find yourself on 1,682 committees throughout the school year. You take notes at each meeting and by the time October hits, you already have 9 billion to-do lists and notes that are so mixed up you can’t remember which committee is which or even what grade level you are teaching these days. Okay, that was an exaggeration. I hope y’all know what grade level you’re teaching! 😉
Nevertheless, here’s my organizational idea. The 7″ by 9″ notebook is the perfect size to take to all of your school meetings. With 124 pages, it isn’t too thin or too thick for your tote or purse. Erin Condren also makes these amazing notebook dividers that can be clipped into your notebooks and planners. What?! It’s true. It’s genius! Use a divider to separate each committee you are on for this school year. So, if you are on four different committees, you will want three dividers for your notebook, in order to split it up into four sections. Now you can take ALL of your committee notes in ONE binder, and stay SUPER organized! Eeekkk!!! You’re welcome.
I love the notebooks even more, because they have a built in “list” feature on the right side of the pages. The 8.5″ by 11″ notebooks have this feature, too! Whenever I sit in on committees, I always end up leaving with a small (or sometimes a large) to-do list that I have to tackle after the meeting is over. By using Erin Condren’s notebook and dividers, your notes and to-do lists are organized into one notebook that you can easily keep track of. Of course, as you can see below, I also had to include a sticky storage pocket into the inside of my committee notebook. 🙂
Designer Pocket Folders
These folders are precious! The designs are beautiful and don’t you just love the pretty scalloped edges on the inside pockets? The touch of metallic on the covers of the folders add that perfect glam and sparkle for your school meetings and paperwork.
Teacher Planner
This is probably the section many of you were waiting for, so here we go! Let’s take a closer look at the 2016-2017 Erin Condren Teacher Lesson Planner. Now, I will start by explaining that my building requires us to upload our weekly lesson plans to the computer, so I actually use a digital template for my lesson plans. However, my mind has always worked by needing to see the larger picture for our school year. That is why I LOVE using the Teacher Lesson Planner to “map” out our year. It makes weekly lesson planning so much easier! If you do use a paper based lesson planner, this one is an amazing choice! Let’s take a look:
The planner includes all kinds of helpful pages in the front. Holidays and dates, a page to list your students’ birthdays, contact info, absent charts, student lists, and pages you can use for graphs and notes. Below, is my favorite part of the planner. I love these year-long planning pages. I can jot down the main themes, standards, and units for each month of the school year. It helps me to “know where to go” when writing my weekly lesson plans.
You can write the dates in for reach month if you prefer, or, you can use these cute Designer Dots to customize the calendars within your planner.
The 40 week lesson planning pages are colorful and easy to organize.
I love the sectioned off areas for different subjects and the color-coded days of the week.
The student checklist pages in the photograph below can be used for anything you’d like: field trip permission slip forms, beginning of the year forms, student goals, homework, etc. (I also really love her bright highlighters!)
The planner comes with these awesome stickers that you can use within your planner. This will keep you organized and make important days and dates pop off of the page.
The sticker book is filled with a huge collection of stickers that you can order to match your notebooks and planners. A lot of the stickers are cute, inspirational quotes that I think would be uplifting to spread out throughout your planner or notebooks. Plus, what teacher doesn’t like stickers?
I hope you loved getting a closer look at some of my favorite Erin Condren teacher tools. Everything is as beautiful in person as it is on the website! If you have never ordered from Erin Condren before, be sure to first click my referral code below, in order to get
$10 off your first order!
Thank you again for stopping by my blog today! As always-
Happy Learning,
Thank you for the EC tour and for your organization tips, Christina!
I know I’m a year behind but I started looking at Erin Condren planners recently. I am wondering if you use her life planner as well. I was trying to think of a way to have everything in one place but I can’t really get around having one planner for my life and one specifically for school.
Hi Keren! Yes, I use the Life Planner. 🙂 I love it!