School Essentials

Every year during the hot month of August every parent begins to feel the tension; school is starts soon, but how do you ensure that your child won’t arrive unprepared. Usually when a child enters a class, each teacher has a list of the requirements. These are usually the particular items that not every person might have such as a special calculator for Math, a pair of goggles for Science, or some sticky notes for English. However, what they don’t include is the stuff that they assume that everyone already has. These are the essentials, supposedly knowing what to buy for school success is common sense, well maybe for the school expert, but not for most parents. So, here is a list compiled by a class of elementary, middle and high school students of the things that have been most useful for them over the years.

Elementary School:

• Pack of colored pencils
• Pack of nice (but easily replaceable) mechanical pencils
• Extra pack of lead
• Pack of #2 pencils (some to take to school, some to keep at home)
• Pencil sharpener
• Blue or black pen for final copies
• Red pen for correcting homework
• Pencil box (so the list above doesn’t need replacing every week)
• A big binder
• A binder hole punch
• A notebook or pack of notebook paper

Middle School:

• Nice mechanical pencils
• Lead
• A calculator (Texas Instrument in 20’s)
• #2 pencils
• Sharpener
• Several binders
• A binder hole punch
• High lighter
• Red, blue, black pens
• Notebook and binder paper (college ruled)
• Dividers for the binder
• Folders

High school:

• Texas Instrument 81, 82 calculator for anything above geometry
• Microsoft office for home computer for homework
• Pens, pencils
• Folders
• Binders
• High lighter
• Binder Hole Punch
• Paper (college ruled)
• 5 star notebook
• Dividers
• Compass/protractor set

Back Packs

Obviously, there has to be a place to put all of this and so for backpacks: Jan sport is the most popular one and they come in all shapes and sizes: Black is recommended because it doesn’t get visibly dirty. If your kid has no problem with bullies it might be safe to buy them a rolly backpack, but otherwise prepare for these scenarios: people kicking it, stealing it, laughing at people trying to get up the stairs with one or just making fun of the kids who have one. For some reason kids really hate other kids with rolly backpacks, but maybe if your child is a leader they could start a new trend and save their backs as well.