For years, there was a corner of my house that filled up every summer with classroom finds I couldn’t leave on the shelf. By July it was a small mountain. And half of that mountain, every year, came from one store: Michaels.
If you’ve ever wandered those aisles wondering whether that bin, banner, or basket of clothespins is teacher gold or just an impulse buy, this list is for you. These are my ten Michaels teacher must-haves, the ones I actually used in my classroom year after year, not the cute things that ended up shoved in a drawer.
Bring your 40% off coupon. You’re going to need it!
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A set of small color-coded bins tucked inside one bigger box, sized exactly right for task cards. Be still my teacher heart.
I used the colors to differentiate. Each bin got prepped with cards at a specific level, and kids grabbed the color that matched their group. No relabeling, no shuffling, no guessing which stack belonged to whom.
Three different drawer setups, three different teacher problems solved.
The six-drawer rolling cart is your weekly copy system. One drawer per day, Monday through Friday, plus a sixth drawer labeled “next week” for the copies you ran early because you were feeling ambitious. (You’ll thank yourself on Sunday night.)
The four-drawer desktop unit becomes your paper triage station: grade, copy, file, laminate. Anything that crosses your desk lands in one of those four drawers, and you process them once a week instead of letting paper take over your life.
The nine-drawer organizer is for everyone who ditched the bulky teacher desk. Sticky notes, expo markers, paper clips, the chapstick you keep losing. One drawer per category and you stop digging through tote bags.
These are the buckets that turn into whatever you need them to be.
Use them for classroom library bins, one per genre or one per reading level, however you want to organize. Use them for math manipulative storage so the cubes don’t end up in the rug. Use them as group supply caddies that live on each table. Use them for indoor recess bins on the days the kids can’t go outside.
Mine stayed stuffed with the floor pillows my firsties dragged out for independent reading time. Whatever you use them for, the colors are too good to skip.
The whole point of these is that you can rewrite them. Hang a chalkboard banner over your bulletin board that says “Math Stars” in September, wipe it down for “Reading Rockstars” in November, change it again for the seasonal display in February. One purchase, a year of bulletin board headers.
I also used them for welcome banners on Meet the Teacher night and for the “Today’s Specials” board where I wrote out the day’s schedule.
This is the section that makes me lose track of time every single visit. There is a whole aisle, organized by color. Pick your color (mint green, dusty rose, navy, whatever your classroom theme is for the year), and the entire shelf is clothespins, banners, paper decorations, garlands, and letters that all match.
If you’ve ever tried to coordinate a classroom theme across five different brands and ended up with seven shades of “kind of teal,” this aisle is going to fix your life.
Pair it with my trendy classroom decor themes post if you’re still figuring out which palette you’re committing to this year.
Hear me out: skip the fadeless paper.
You and I both know your theme is changing next year anyway. A roll of plastic table cover from the party aisle costs a fraction of bulletin board paper, comes in every color, cuts cleanly, and lasts the whole year. Add the 40% off coupon and you’re decorating bulletin boards for under five dollars.
It also doubles as actual table cover for messy art projects, which is kind of its real job.
I turned off the overhead fluorescents almost every day. The lighting was harsh, the buzz was loud, and kids settled faster when the room was softer.
Lanterns are the cheap fix. Hang a few from the ceiling at different heights, or cluster them over your reading nook. They come in every color, the white ones look great year-round, and you can swap in seasonal colors for the holidays. Orange and black for October, red and green for December, pastels for spring.
If you want them lit, the battery-operated tea lights from the same store drop right inside.
Confession: I lied earlier when I said I bought nothing on that trip. I came home with these. They were 70% off and it was a moral imperative.
Decorative letters are stupidly versatile. Spell out your name above your desk. Label your reading groups with A, B, C, D and hang each letter over the matching table. Spell “READ” above your library nook or “MATH” above your number line. If you teach kindergarten or first, the entire alphabet on display is technically curriculum.
If you’re handy with a Silhouette Cameo, you can make these yourself. But for 70% off, I’m not cutting vinyl when Michaels did the work for me.
Pom-pom garland on a bulletin board adds the kind of dimension flat paper trim doesn’t. Stars hanging from the ceiling at staggered heights make a flat classroom feel layered. Pair them with table or group numbers and you’ve got a wayfinding system that also looks cute.
Bonus: these live in the color-coordinated aisle from #5, so they automatically match whatever palette you’re already using.
I did not know clothespins came in this many sizes and colors until I stood in front of the Michaels clothespin section. People. There are options.
Use them for your classroom clip chart. Use the mini ones for individual desk-sized clip charts. Write each kid’s name on one and clip it to their paper before turning it in (no-name papers, solved). Clip your chalkboard banner flags to twine for an instant bulletin board border. Use them as bag clips for your snack stash in the teacher lounge, because you matter too.
I still kind of want one in every color.
A few things I’ve learned that make every trip cheaper:
Sign up for the teacher discount. Michaels gives educators 15% off year-round, including sale items, and bumps it to 20% during July for back-to-school. You’ll need a school ID, pay stub, or homeschool documentation to verify through the Michaels Rewards program. Once you’re set up, your discount syncs automatically every time you check in with your phone number at the register.
Pick coupon or teacher discount, not both. Michaels does not let you stack the teacher discount with their regular coupons, and the discount doesn’t work on clearance. Do the math at the register. Some weeks the 40% off one regular-price coupon beats 15% off your whole cart. Other weeks the teacher discount wins.
Shop the seasonal clearance windows. The week after a holiday is when the real discounts hit. November 1st for Halloween decor, December 26th for Christmas, late February for Valentine’s. I’ve grabbed 70-80% off classroom decor those weeks. (Just remember the teacher discount won’t apply to clearance.)
Use the app. The Michaels app holds your weekly coupons, your rewards balance, and a list of ongoing sales. Open it before you check out. Always.
If you’re in full classroom-organization mode, my ultimate guide to teacher organization covers the Amazon side of my setup. And if you’re a Hobby Lobby person too, my shabby chic classroom finds from Hobby Lobby post is your next stop. Trying to figure out how much decor is too much? I have thoughts on that.
That’s my Michaels list. Grab the 40% off coupon (or your teacher discount, your call), bring a cart, and try to resist the urge to buy every single thing in the color-coordinated aisle. Or don’t. I won’t judge.
Got a Michaels find I missed? Tell me in the comments. I want to know what’s in your cart.
