10 Best Dollar Store Finds for Our Home Classroom!

When Covid hit, we were ill-prepared to have both kids back home every moment of the day. Add to that, we were at a crossroads with our then two-and-a-half year old youngest son where we needed to start teaching him things that would prepare him for preschool. There was a bit of trial and error and he never ended up going to daycare or preschool, and over an extended period, we found our stride at home. Dollar Tree was a great resource for us! Especially since our local stores went all out with newer/ bigger craft sections! Heres what I found that we love best!

1. Bins and Jars! I’ve always been a fan of organization! Having everything organized helps the kids to stay organized and it just plain makes life easier. It’s no easy to grab the crayon jar and put crayons in it… likewise for the sticker jar or the pencil jar….. We separate our lego and put them into gallon sized wide-mouth plastic containers, and its actually quite calming to see everything organized and in its own spot. We needed more bins and jars to accommodate additional school supplies and it was SO SO WORTH IT!
2. Fun Bandaids Our boys are bat-shit crazy! Everything is parkour. Our expensive sofa was recently parkoured to its untimely death. We see injuries frequently and the kids get excited when theres a fun band-aid to piece them back together. We buy huge boxes elsewhere, our fave brand is not at dollar tree, but we buy a lot of character ones there for the little boo boos and they’re usually a hit!
3. Reward Toys. They have so many badass little toys for the littles at Dollar tree. Toy Story, Batman, Incredibles…. they change out styles frequently enough when we’re never at a loss. We also added a lot of race track and cars to our Hot Wheels collection (excellent rewards for a well-behaved day at home)…. they sell the name-brand stuff at dollar tree.
4. Writing Pads. We’ve bought more of these than I can count. The writing pads are thick… lots of pages, and are large-ruled for kids learning how to write letters and words with letters that are the correct size in relation to one-another. You can drop them in the recycle bin when you’re done (I’m a sap, so I tend to take photos of all the pages first).
5. Paints They have several paint options, but my fave paints are the bigger bottles of individual colors of tempura paint. They’re a nice quality for paint brushes, finger painting, stamping….. a nice value all-around and a little goes a long ways.
6. Wooden Signs. Arts and crafts from our recycling are fun, but sometimes, just spending a $1 or 2 on some precut wood is just easier! we get holiday signs, motivational ones… and even with the recent price hike to $1.25, We’re still out the door with two for under $3, I like to put the year the pain them on the back, so they’ll have the best in their keepsake box for when they’re old guys.
7. First Day of School Sign Honestly, this was one of my fave purchases from the Dollar Tree! I was so surprised to find one of these, and the quality is even good! such a great purchase and a nice way to say…. “we’re at home, but its still school! we’re still here to learn”
8. Alphabet Banner I saw the classroom banners for years. They’re adorable, but not necessarily a “for home” thing… until pandemic. I wanted to establish a nice area for learning that felt like a classroom. Chalk board…. check! world map…. check!…… Alphabet banner…. check! so easy to set the learning mood in a home!
9. Crayons Dollar tree crayons aren’t the best deal…. the best deal is before school starts when stores have 16 and 24 packs of name brand Crayola crayons for .25 to .50 cents…. what Dollar tree does have are 8-packs of Crayola crayons in varieties you may not see everywhere. We bought pastel glitter and metallic glitter on our last trip. I don’t put them in the main jar, but rather pull out one-or-two at a time so they’re a treat.
10. Seeds! Since the purchase of our new home with a huge yard without a sewage drain in it (like the home we rented for years), we’ve been on a seedling kit. Our dollar tree seeds aren’t organic, but they’re sprouting great! The kids love to help with planting and we spend lots of time talking about what we might snack on first once plants are in the ground when it warms up. Seed packets are 4/$1 at the dollar tree. Doesn’t get better than that!