1. Dictionaries
Though not required you may wish to purchase a dictionary for looking up new vocabulary.  This is the dictionary I use which I think is quite good. It is called the Concise English-Chinese/Chinese-English Dictionary and is available on amazon.com. The edition I own is the second edition.You can read my review of the dictionary at the same site.

Recent reviewers of this dictionary on amazon.com have said that the print in the third edition is way too small. If you cannot find the second edition then I would suggest you look around for an alternate choice or wait till I have a chance to review others.

2. Online Dictionaries
There are several excellent online English-Chinese dictionaries. Some even have audio. Look for them under My Links.

3. Gridded Paper
If you run out of gridded paper for practicing your Chinese characters you can print some out from home. Go to this site. The size of the squares I use are .8 for sixth grade, and .6 for seventh grade.

4. Stroke Order
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of following the correct stroke order when writing Chinese characters. If you can't remember the stroke order for a particular character don't cheat by writing it any old way. You can look up the most frequently used characters by pinyin at this site.

Another great site with animated character stroke order can be found here.