Grant Ideas

Every year I exceed the tax credit the government gives back for classroom expenses along with the majority of my colleagues. Our wishlists are never-ending because amazing teaching ideas are created every day. Unfortunately, it may come as a surprise, but our salaries don't necessarily accommodate our creativity.

This is the reason I heart grants! Districts give money to purchase materials that will benefit our students and it is fabulous!

Never written a grant before? Have no idea what to write a grant for? Here are a couple of ideas! (Click the underlined title for the companies website)


Lonestar Learning:
I was planning to write a grant for these last year, but as luck would have it our school had some extra funds and was able to purchase it! The website has quite a few products, but my favorite are the Picture Vocabulary Cards. They take vocabulary words and turn them into images that demonstrates the meaning of the word. They are totally adorable and make an amazing word wall for kids to learn! Sets are around $30 each and are available for Language Arts, Math, and Science. (Hopefully Social Studies someday!) Here are a few examples:

Mainstay Math:

I came across this booth at my first teaching conference ever! I remembered it a year later and decided to make it my first grant. The lady who owns this small business was so nice and even helped me to write my grant by providing me her thesis which she wrote about the benefit of using literature to teach math. Her Literacy Libraries were created specifically for each grade level (PreK-8th) and even come with a label telling you which book to read for each objective. Each Library contains about 22-24 books and cost around $200, which is a lot cheaper then buying the books individually. These are the three kits I received with my grant money:

Math Songs:

It is crazy that I have a HUGE fear of public speaking, but have no problem talking (and singing) in front of a group of teenagers. I am such an auditory learner that I can hear a song once or twice and know all the lyrics. Many of my students are the same way so this was perfect for them! Can I sing well?? haha! Nope. Do my kids care? Nope. They laugh at me the first week or so, and next thing they know the songs are stuck in their heads too, reminding them of math concepts!

Anyways, last summer I was thrilled to attend CAMT! By far the best workshop we went to was Kay Smitherman's "Math Sing-a-longs." We spent an hour singing some of her tunes, and I was surprised that she had written a few that I already knew ("Mean the average, mode-most often, rang-subtract the smallest from the largest"). Her sets come with the cd and a binder with lyrics. I was planning to write a grant for this as well, but our school purchased this too!

~Mrs. Scott