Amazon’s Prime Day is set for 23-26 of June for 2026, the annual sale for Prime members when prices are often at their lowest of the year (even lower than Black Friday and Cyber Monday).
To participate in Prime Day, you do need to have a Prime membership. The good news is, you can get a 30-day free trial, or if you have a student or young person (18-24) in your house, they get a 6-mos free trial and half-price subscriptions afterwards.
Two good deals to look out for on the Prime weekend:
1) Amazon products are deeply discounted, and some of them - like Kindle e-readers - will generally drop to their lowest price of the year. The basic Kindle, for example, will usually be discounted by 20%.
I have bought a lot of Kindles ever since they first came out in 2007. While I do like the Paperwhite, I’ve bought considerably more of the basic model. One of my homeschooling friends introduced me to the idea of getting one for each child, and how that means all of them can follow along as the parent reads a story. What’s more, the younger children find that Kindles give them a leg up with their reading skills: adjusting to a larger font is easier on their eyes, as is the gentle e-ink versus a back-lit screen.
If you’re thinking about getting one or more for your family, here’s my 🔥 hot take 🔥 — opt for the “kids version” even if you’re buying a basic Kindle for yourself. It’s a little more expensive than the adult base model, but comes with a longer warranty, a free case, and the option to disable the kids’ interface so it’s no different than a normal, everyday Kindle for parents and kids alike.
2) Also on Prime weekend, you can stock up on high-quality stationery items, the kinds that home-learning families love. First in my basket every year is the largest box of Ticonderoga pencils with the deepest discount. At the time of writing this, the box of 96 is the best deal, working out at twelve cents apiece. If you don’t know Ticonderoga pencils, you haven’t lived!
I first heard about Ticonderoga pencils at the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire (UK). Our museum guide told us that Dahl sharpened six of them every morning, before he started work on his latest novel, and because they were produced in the Adirondack hills of New York at the time, he had to get them shipped - literally shipped - from “across the pond”. His dedication to them made me intrigued, so I bought one in the gift shop.
Yeah, he was right. They are great (even if they are made in China now). 😉
While you’re putting the Ticonderoga pencils in your Amazon basket, throw in some Faber-Castell eraser caps (for when you break off the erasers) and some Staedtler dual-hole manual sharpeners. To me, these have been the trifecta of excellence.
Now two things to watch out for:
1) Vendors will often raise their prices in the weeks running up to Prime Day, making their “deals” look sweeter than they really are. There’s a website called camelcamelcamel.com where you can paste in the product’s link for checking the price history on it. If you’re in the UK, you can use uk.camelcamelcamel.com. The good news is that Amazon seems to have learned a lesson about these devious practices from years passed, and has implemented a tighter rein on price fluctuations since April.
2) On the flip side, there are some genuinely good deals going on right now, even before the official arrival of Prime Day. Manufacturers like Apple 🍎 have already started discounting their products in advance, announcing sales on ipads, air pods, and even some laptops. On those latter items, be careful that you’re getting one of the more recent models with the Apple chips — denoted with an “M” such as M1, M2, etc — and that’s because Apple is dropping support for the older ones with Intel chips. Such a shame: my trusty Macbook Pro is over 10 yrs old and still going strong, but the forced obsolescence has me monitoring Prime weekend more closely than ever.
🎉 BONUS IDEA 🎉 Why not buy your kids their first fountain pen? I introduced fountain pens for my tweens as a way of trying to get them to write with more care and intentionality, and the best starter pen I’ve ever used is the Pilot Kakuno. They come in fun colors, take Pilot ink cartridges, and generally flow liberally and smoothly. And yes, they did help my kids write more beautifully … as long as they were using the Kakuno!
For a deep dive into pens and the Kakuno brand, check out my post about pens on Instagram.