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I work on the "Near West Side" of Chicago in a "blended" State Pre-K and Early Childhood Special Education classroom. We serve students who are either "At Risk" for academic failure or who already have been identified with developmental disabilities. Our goal is to provide these children with a nurturing learning environment where they can develop a love of learning and hopefully prevent future problems. I like to DREAM BIG because I believe my children DESERVE BIG! However this is extremely difficult with our rather minimal yearly supply budget. I have been thankful to all the kind donors at Donors Choose that have helped me make my classroom so successful since I began my teaching career in this classroom three years ago. We are running out or low on many special types of paper that have been donated for various areas in our room. We do daily journaling activities with our children. The children write in their journals everyday. This gives the children the ability to work on their fine motor, pre-literacy, and pre-writing skills. This gives the adults in the room a portfolio of the progression of the skills of the students. All of the children have a journal that they use everyday. We are running low on our paper supply for the daily journals. I am requesting a case of three-whole punched paper to use in our journals. Many of my special education students are non-verbal and attending a school far away from their neighborhood due to the fact that the program we offer is not offered in every Chicago Public School. This makes it hard for my students to tell their parents what they have done at school each day. I have solved that by acquiring a photo printer that prints photo quality prints right in our classroom. Unfortunately, we are about to run out of ink and paper. I am requesting five additional paper/ink packs for our classroom printer. I am currently teaching my children how to use my old digital camera so that they can take pictures of each other during play. I believe it is important to expose them to technology that they may not be able to afford at their homes. I hope that by the end of the year many of them will be able to take pictures of their own work that they can take home! I believe it is important for students to see adults writing in the room and help them graph and web their ideas. This helps them to see that words can be written and helps them understand the writing process. Unfortunately, our classroom does not have a blackboard or whiteboard. I have found easel paper by ?Post-it? that will allow the teachers in the room to create an instant blackboard on any available wall space in the classroom ! Thank you for reading through my proposal. I hope you can help us acquire the paper we need to make our classroom as successful as it can be.