As a teacher I am always on the lookout for great ideas for my classroom. Handouts, printables, flip books, homework, games... Often, I would find something that was close to what I wanted, but not quite right. So I would make it for myself. At first, the pages were awful not terribly attractive (remember Comic Sans? It was my favorite), but they worked! Over time, got a little better at it, and I started sharing things with the teachers at my school. It was then that I discovered Teachers Pay Teachers.
Oh. My. Word. So many products to choose from, from other teachers just like me! And a lot of them were FREE. Woo-hoo! I went a little bit crazy downloading free clip art (did I tell you I LOVE clip art?), and then I started BUYING things. Like all the time. I couldn't stop myself. It got so bad I had to hide it from my husband. How was I going to pay for my habit?! Well, why not sell my creations on TpT?
So I made myself a store and uploaded a free product. It was a school year calendar that I made to put in my teacher planning binder. With bright colors and polka-dots. I thought maybe a few teachers could use it, and that made me happy.
A year later, I have updated it for the 2015-2016 school year, and as of today, it has been downloaded 19,422 23,355 times. Seriously. Something that I made has made a lot of teachers' lives just a little bit easier. How cool is that?
I've also made some other products. Things that I use in my own classroom. I charge a little bit of money for them. Not a lot. And here's the good news: I am now breaking even! I figure that if I can earn as much as I spend on TpT... it all helps our kiddos, right?
So, enough background info, and on to the Challenge part of this post! Last week I joined the TpT Seller Challenge started by four amazing teacher-bloggers. I was to go back to one of my first products and update the covers with new fonts and clip art.
I chose my 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice:
Blessings,
