I love this thread. We have done a couple of things, and have had a couple of different things brought back to us. One of the things that we have done is since my husband and myself do a lot of work with kids and music, for the kids that we work with, ie, Suncday School, and other Church kid things, we always go to the different countries in Epcot, and get few musical instruments that you can not not find around here, tell them where the instrument is from, and during certain songs, different kids get to play around with them. This could easily be done for a classroom too.. Some teachers have stuff like this around for kids to look at and play with. They are not that expensive, and the kids love playing them. Also, there are always little fun things on clearance, and cheap.. WE often hit the sale racks...
What we have had done for our kids at times are Mickey ears... Someone had found some animal kingdom ears on clearance for about $1 a piece, and brought those back for the whole class. Hitting the outlets are always a good idea, we have found a lot of the themepark items there for cheap.... This is a great topic, and has given us some ideas for the next adventure to Disney.......... Only 148 more days to go....