iPod Shuffles...Pinch Me I'm in Heaven

Wow!!  I remember going into Target around September and being tempted to buy a set of 6 iPod shuffles since our listening center stereo was not working.  Here I was trying to convince my husband to why I needed them...and of course he told me that I was talking crazy and especially since they were too expensive. 

He even tried to convince me to buy an MP3 Player that he found at Best Buy for a cheaper price.  Well, I was desperate for a listening center and bought one to test it out.

Let me tell you, this little MP3 player was a joke, it wouldn't charge when I would plug it into my computer and I had the hardest time trying to transfer a story to it.  I just gave up and was so disappointed....good thing that I only bought one, right!?  

That's when I thought, okay...I know that I really want iPod shuffles, how am I going to get them without having my husband flip out if I bought them myself.  That's when I remembered about Donorschoose.org.  I thought, why not give it a try and made a project just asking for a set of 6 in November.  If you haven't heard or tried using Donors Choose, I totally recommend it!  

After my project got approved, I let my family, friends, and students' families know about our class project.  We were able to get enough donations and our project was fully funded!  I was in complete shock, we were going to finally have a listening center that worked!  Is this for real...pinch me I'm in heaven!? 

My kiddos and I did so many cheers and dances when we found out the great news!!  The funny thing was, that many of my kiddos were like, "Yeay...teacher what are iPod shuffles?"  Here we are happy to get them, but they had no clue what they were.  

Finally when they arrived in December, I had to figure out how I was going to setup my new listening center..tick-tock...went my brain.  How would it look, so that it would work for our classroom.  This is what I came up with....TADA, our listening center!

I wanted to make sure that my students knew which story went with which iPod shuffle and where to place them back.  So I went to my favorite store, Michaels!  Bought some colored foam sheets to match each iPod shuffle and numbered each pocket.

I found some cute dixie cups with owls at Target and used them to store our iPod shuffles.

Since the pocket chart was working so well with my learning centers I thought why not do the same for the iPod shuffles.  I printed out the numbers in color and their pictures so that they would know which story they would be listening to for the day.

They even use matching colorful lakeshore pillows for this center so that they can get comfy while they listen to a story.

When they are done listening to their story, they fill out a listen center form.

So far this center has been a big hit in our classroom all thanks to Donors Choose and all the wonderful families who donated to our class project!