5 Years of Lakeshore Learning Orders: What's Worth Buying and What to Skip

Lakeshore Learning is worth the money if you buy the right things — and the right things are fewer than their catalog suggests. Their classroom materials genuinely survive daily use, the teacher discount is real, and the website isn't painful to deal with. But they'll happily sell you a $17 package of border trim that another supplier sells for $4. The real skill in ordering lakeshore learning products is knowing what to skip, not what to buy.

That's the conclusion five years and roughly 400 orders have pushed me toward. I didn't arrive at it quickly. When I first took over purchasing for our K-8 school in 2020, I assumed my job was to find the cheapest price on everything, and Lakeshore looked like a premium vendor I'd eventually cut. Then I watched a $12 box of bargain crayons melt into a waxy puddle on a February radiator, and a "budget" laminator jam itself on its own flimsy pouches. I started tracking reorders instead of just prices, and the picture shifted. The expensive version is often the cheaper version, because the money isn't in the unit price — it's in the reorder.

Why This Isn't My First Education Supply Rodeo

I'm the office administrator for a K-8 school in Oregon. I don't have an education degree and I've never taught a class. I'm the person teachers complain to when the glue sticks are dry, the paper cutter is dull, and the classroom scissors have disappeared for the third time. I process 60 to 80 orders a year — roughly $120,000 spread across nine vendors. I answer to both the principal and the district finance office.

The finance office taught me the most expensive lesson of this job. When I took over purchasing in 2020, I found a new vendor that quoted $1,100 less than our regular supplier on an order of 300 science workbooks. They couldn't produce a purchase-order-compliant invoice, finance rejected the expense, and I spent a week reconciling a mess that saved us nothing. Now I verify invoicing capability before placing any order. It's not glamorous, but it's the part of school administration that keeps the lights on.

What Lakeshore Learning Products Are Actually Worth Buying

The strongest case for lakeshore learning products is the stuff that takes daily abuse from children. Their classroom rugs, for example: we bought one for the reading corner in 2021, and it has survived four years of story time, one marker incident, and at least two kids who should not have been eating goldfish near it. The cheaper rug we bought for the music room from a big-box store lasted eleven months before the edges started fraying. Same idea, very different staying power. Here's what I know from five years of open houses: parents can't tell whether a rug cost $89 or $489, but they can tell when a classroom looks cared for. Quality reads as respect.

Their teaching manipulatives are where the brand really earns its reputation. The magnetic math counters, the alphabet tiles, the sorting sets — these hold up to relentless little hands in a way that cheaper catalog alternatives don't. I compared them side by side once, setting our Lakeshore set against a generic set a teacher had ordered from a discount site. The generic set lost pieces within a month. The Lakeshore set from the same year is still complete. That's not a coincidence.

Where I'd be more cautious: art supplies and bulletin board décor. The construction paper and oak tag are genuinely good — worth ordering in bulk during the back-to-school sale. But the decorative border rolls are priced like they're made of precious metals, and the glue sticks are nothing special. And since we're on the subject of paper: if you download the free printable resources from their site, respect the pixel math. A 3000 × 2000 pixel image maxes out at 10 inches wide at 300 DPI; stretch it into a banner and you'll see the pixels. For handouts, standard 20 lb bond (75 gsm) is fine for memos, but their heavier art paper handles paint and glue much better than copy paper does.

The Lakeshore Learning Website: Better Than Most, Still Not Amazon

The lakeshore learning website isn't going to win design awards, but it does the job better than most education supply portals. That's a low bar, but it's a real one. Search works, filters work, and the account reorder feature is the biggest time-saver we have. During our 2024 vendor consolidation project, I moved several categories to Lakeshore specifically because reordering cut our processing time from about 40 minutes per order to under 15.

The drawbacks are real. The stock indicator lies sometimes — "in stock" has meant "we have exactly one" more than once, and you find out when the shipment arrives short. And the checkout flow really wants you to choose store pickup, even if you're nowhere near a Lakeshore store. Those are annoyances, not deal-breakers. The bigger issue was on our side: we had no formal reorder process. The third time a teacher ordered the same bulletin board letters in three separate weeks and we paid shipping each time, I finally created a shared spreadsheet with one rule — if it's not on the list, it needs approval before it goes in the cart.

The Teacher Discount: The Math Is Actually Simple

The teacher discount is what people ask about first. It's 15% off regular-priced items for verified educators — at least that's been the case for the last few years, and they've been consistent about it. Don't hold me to the exact terms, because they run promos that change the rules occasionally. But as a baseline, that's the deal.

And here's where I'm honest about a personal weakness. I have spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time using a Starbucks calorie calculator to convince myself that ordering the smaller size is basically the same drink. It is not the same drink. Lakeshore's discount math doesn't require that kind of self-deception. 15% off an $800 back-to-school order is $120 — which for a school means a new set of manipulatives, laminating pouches for three classrooms, or one very good rug. On a $100 order, though, it's $15, which basically covers the shipping. The lesson: consolidate. One big order per semester, one shipping fee, one invoice for finance, 15% off the top.

Classroom Tech: Digital Whiteboards and Wireless Printers

Since I'm the person who handles classroom tech purchases, I get asked two questions more than any others.

What is a digital whiteboard, and does your school need one?

So, what is a digital whiteboard? It's basically a large touchscreen display that connects to a computer or runs apps on its own. Teachers write with a stylus or their finger, drag content around, save everything to the cloud, and pull up video or web content mid-lesson. The good ones run from about $2,000 to $7,000 installed.

After watching four classrooms pilot them, my read is that a digital whiteboard is a genuinely different teaching tool, not a glorified projector. Teachers who use them daily almost stop touching the traditional whiteboard. But the investment only pays off if the school commits to training. An expensive interactive display used as a big TV is the worst purchase in edtech. If your staff isn't ready to learn it, spend that money on classroom supplies instead.

The wireless printer question

The other thing I've been asked about a lot this year is a wireless printer for the science lab. My advice: don't overthink it. Teachers need something they can print to from a laptop without emailing the main office. Look for AirPrint compatibility, built-in duplex scanning, and a toner cost that doesn't equal the price of the printer every six weeks. Order it online and wait the week instead of paying the big-box markup. Our last one has survived 14 months of middle-schoolers printing volcano diagrams, which is a better track record than my home printer has ever achieved.

When to Skip Lakeshore (and What to Buy Elsewhere)

For all the good things, there are clear categories where Lakeshore is the wrong call. Commodity office supplies — pencils, folders, copy paper, scissors — are the big one. Quality differences are hard to notice in those items, and the price gap is real. A bulk office supplier will beat them every time. Lakeshore's versions of these are convenience items, not value items.

Custom printed materials are another case. If you need custom die-cut shapes, unusual finishes, or quantities smaller than 25, an online print service or a local print shop is a better fit than any school supply catalog. And if you need something same-day in hand, a local store beats any website — Lakeshore's shipping is reliable but not fast, usually several days rather than overnight.

The goal isn't to find the perfect vendor. It's to know which vendor fits which part of your order. Buy the classroom stuff that needs to survive contact with children from Lakeshore, take the teacher discount, and skip the consumables you can get in bulk elsewhere. That's what five years of orders have taught me, and it's what keeps my teachers happy, my finance office off my back, and my reorder rate low.