Come play with us at BLOCK Fest this Saturday, October 3rd at the St. Charles Convention Center! Parents As Teachers is sponsoring this FREE and FUN-FILLED event from 10AM to 4PM and The Teachers' Lounge will be present with some wonderful products, activities, give-aways and raffles.

Wondering what BLOCK Fest Is?

BLOCK Fest is a unique experience that helps children from 8-months to 8-years-old learn to be math thinkers! Playing with blocks helps children develop early math, science and literacy skills in a fun, interactive way. Find out what wonderful things are happening to your child's brain as he plays with blocks! You won't want to miss the debut of Block Fest plus dozens of other interactive activities and exhibits.

And we don't want to miss you!

Did you decorate your classroom with Poppin' Patterns from Creative Teaching Press this year? If so, you should enter their "Poppin' Patterns Contest"! Just email a picture of your classroom to contest@creativeteaching.com. Be sure to include your name, email address, school name, grade level, subject you teach and a description of how/why you used the products the way you did. All photos should be in JPG of TIFF format. Contest ends Oct. 19th. Winners will receive $50 in CTP products!

Click Here For Official Contest Details

Our first shipment of frogs sold out quickly, but new frogs were just delivered to the store this morning. They are out in the store looking for someone to take them home. The customers who purchased our first set of frogs said that they make wonderful class pets because they are so easy to take care of. You only need to feed them twice a week, and their tanks only need to be cleaned a few times per year. Stop by the store soon before these guys are gone again!

We have been waiting all summer and the Dr. Seuss Punch Out Resusable Letters are HERE!
Make sure to come by and pick out a set before they are sold out!

Our new frogs are not the only thing that is green at The Teachers' Lounge! The Teachers' Lounge has been green and getting greener as the months go by. We recycle, reduce and reuse as much as we can. Right now, we recycle our aluminum soda cans and as much paper as we can, including packing paper from all the deliveries we receive. We re-use cardboard boxes and donate all of our bubble wrap, packing peanuts and bags of air to an in-home web business. We started using a water cooler instead of bottled water in our break area so that we don't add more plastic to the world and we even rinse and re-use our cups instead of grabbing a new one with every drink of water!
It is not hard to be mindful of leaving our footprint in this world. We hope your business, school or household is green and getting greener too! If you have any ideas of other ways to recycle, let us know!

The Teachers' Lounge is open on Labor Day from 10AM to 5PM.

Carson Dellosa has just released The Very Hungry Caterpillar Bulletin Board Set just in time for the 40th Anniversay of the beloved book. Here are some pictures of our display of this cute set. The idea for this display was posted on Carson's facebook page, but we altered it a little bit.

This is a great bulletin board set to use for teaching the days of the week. We used sentence strips to write sentences from the story on our board. We highlighted the days of the week by writing them on a nameplate and attaching it to the sentence strips. We also attached library pockets behind the pieces of food that the caterpillar ate. If you attach a popsicle stick to the small caterpillar from the set, the students can move him around the board as they read the sentences.

So I just got off of the phone with Ted in Baton Rouge, LA. Ted is one of the brothers who brings us Mavalus Tape. If you haven’t been introduced to Mavalus Tape then make sure you check out this new product in our store or go to willitstick.com and watch their fun videos experimenting on what they can get to stick to the wall using mavalus tape!
Although, Ted tells me that Mavalus tape has been around since 2001, we just discovered it in March at the NSSEA convention. We love to use it in the store for our projects and to just be goofy some days, hanging staplers and phones on the wall but the best part for us is introducing customers to this amazing (I should say “mavalus”) tape.
The tape comes in bright, fun colors- blue, yellow, red and green but it is not the look you are going to love. It is how it works! Just a little bit of tape can hang a nine pound iron on the wall. ( I did say nine pounds) So, can you imagine what you can hang on the wall in your classroom or your home? It sticks great and when you need to pull the item off the wall, it DOES NOT remove paint or leave a sticky residue.
I sound like a walking commercial but I am telling you, give this product a try.
Ted says that daycares mark their sippy cups with the tape and mark the child’s name on it with a Sharpie. The staff’s only complaint is that the Sharpie marker fades after a few times in the dishwasher. This tape sticks through the dishwashing cycle!
Teachers use it to label shelves in the classroom and use it to create lines on the floor for games.
At The Teachers’ Lounge we have foam core bulletin board displays hanging around the store with just mavalus tape holding them to the wall! We have hung cardboard display boards on the wall too.
If you have used mavalus tape, please respond to our blog and let our customers know what you are using it for and how it’s working!
If you have not used the tape, stop by the store and ask any team member to show you the special way to roll this tape for maximum sticking power.