I usually skip Prime Day. Most of it is stuff I don't need at a price I'm supposed to get excited about. But I looked this time with our school days in mind, and I found fifteen things worth telling you about. Six of them are already in our house.
I checked all of these this morning. Prices move fast during these things, so look before you buy. You'll need Prime.
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1. Yoto Player, 3rd generation, 25% off
We bought our first one when my oldest was three. Five years later I can't name a day we've skipped it.
It's an audio player for kids with no screen on it. They put a card in and a story plays. There's nothing to swipe and nowhere else to go, so a three-year-old can run it herself.
You can also make your own cards, and that's the part most people don't know about. Anything you borrow free from Hoopla or Libby goes right onto a blank card, so most of your library's audiobooks can end up on the player without you paying for any of them.
Mine have learned a great deal from this player, usually while they were building something on the floor and not thinking about it at all. See the deal.
For the school day
2. Epson EcoTank ET-4800 printer, 33% off
I love this printer.
The ink comes in bottles you pour into tanks, so there are no cartridges. You know how you start rationing the printer around March? We stopped doing that the week this came. See the deal.
3. Nicpro dry erase lap boards, 2-pack, 20% off
They're lined on one side and blank on the other, and they sit on a kid's knees on the couch. Spelling and mental math can happen on these instead of on paper, and then we don't have to print anything or file anything. See the deal.
4. Merriam-Webster's Elementary Dictionary, about $20
This one is only about two dollars off, so it isn't really a Prime Day deal. I'm including it because a dictionary on the shelf is worth having, and a child who looks up one word will usually read a few others while she's in there. See it.
5. Kindle Colorsoft Kids, up to 30% off
It has no apps, no videos and no games on it, so a child who opens it can only read.
It's also a lot easier to carry than the four hardbacks I usually end up taking to appointments. See the deal.
6. Fire HD 8 Kids Pro tablet, up to 45% off
It's made for ages six to twelve, the parental controls are already on, and the battery lasts about thirteen hours. I like that the controls come already set, because I don't want to spend the morning supervising a tablet. See the deal.
Somewhere to put all of it
7. YASONIC 3-tier rolling cart, about $33
It has three shelves, it rolls, and it holds sixty-six pounds. You can give one cart to each kid, or one shelf to each subject, and you can roll the whole thing out of the room when you need the table back. It's only 9% off, so this is a fair price rather than a bargain. See it.
8. POWERSTONE rolling cart, 15 drawers, 15% off
It's the same idea with the doors shut. Get this one if your problem is loose pencils and flash cards and the glue stick with no cap. With fifteen drawers, every child can have their own. See the deal.
Twenty quiet minutes
9. Echo Show 5, 40% off
I use this every single day. It runs timers all morning, it keeps the shopping list because I'm never going to remember we're out of butter, and it reminds me of the things I would otherwise drop.
We also play dance music in the kitchen with it, which is honestly half the reason I would replace it tomorrow if it broke. See the deal.
10. MAGNA-TILES Coral Reef set, up to 30% off
These work for a four-year-old and a nine-year-old at the same time, which is rare. When I need forty real minutes with my oldest and the little ones are awake, this is what I put on the floor, and it has never once failed me. See the deal.
11. Skillmatics Foil Fun art kit, up to 46% off
It says mess-free, and I've learned to squint at that. This one's telling the truth though, because there's no paint and no glue in it. A little one can work right next to the big kids. See the deal.
The house, which never gets a day off
12. Shark Pet cordless stick vacuum, 50% off
It's half off, which is the best discount on this list. When everybody's home all day the floors take a beating. Cordless mattered more than I thought it would. I'm done before I've had to ask anyone to move. See the deal.
13. Instant Pot pressure cooker, up to 36% off
School at home means lunch at home every day, and then dinner shows up at the end of a day you already spent teaching. I put something in ours at two o'clock and stop thinking about it until we eat. See the deal.
14. Ninja Air Fryer Pro XL, up to 37% off
It holds six and a half quarts, so everybody eats at once instead of in two shifts. This is lunch on the days nobody thought about lunch, and there are a lot of those days. See the deal.
15. Breville Bambino Plus espresso machine, 20% off
There's a Breville running in this kitchen every morning. Ours is the step up from this one, so I can't tell you how this exact model behaves. I can tell you it steams the milk by itself and it's ready in seconds, and that matters on the mornings that started without me. See the deal.
One more, and this one's ours
Everything above is on Amazon and I make a little if you buy through those links. This one isn't, and my husband and I built it, so I'm not a neutral party here.
I used to lay our whole year out by hand every August. Then October would happen, and I'd be at the kitchen table at eleven at night with an eraser, fixing lines nobody was grading me on.
So we built Margin. You put in your books and how many lessons are in each one, and it lays out your year. When a day gets away from you, it moves the rest of the plan forward instead of leaving you behind. It keeps up with attendance, the reading list, field trips and co-op, and it prints the records your association asks for.
It's $8 a month or $80 a year for your whole family, however many kids you teach. For Prime Day it's 20% off with the code PRIMEDAY20, so the year is $64. The code works through Friday, 9 October, and the 14-day free trial comes first.
I'll say one last thing, because it would matter to me. Nothing about a child ever leaves Margin for an outside service, and we don't use AI or trackers.
What I left off
There are TVs and laptops on sale this week at much better discounts, and some of them are probably great. I've just never finished a hard school day and thought the problem was my television.