Holidays

Gathering tips for Back to School

Published on October 1, 2012

Growing up, back-to-school was my favorite event of the year. Above Halloween and Christmas, for me, back-to-school signified the beginning of a new chapter in my life. It was much like a New Year’s Eve of sorts, but with new schools supplies.

To this day, a trip to the office supply store beats a visit anywhere else. I adore looking through all the office and school supplies, learning about new organizational systems, trying out pens, etc. My kid missed the school registration deadline by two days and so he is stuck at home for another year . When he is ready to go to school, we will buy him more school supplies than he’ll know what to do with and we’ll ask him to do homework every night, even if his “homework” is just coloring. My niece graduated kindergarten a few months ago and she was reading by the time she moved onto 1st grade. I look forward to having him ready quietly for 15 minutes every day.

There are so many great first-day-of-school traditions that I’m looking into so I can have something consistent. I like the idea of having the kids hold a sign up with the grade that they’re going into – or something similar to that.

I’m also compiling ideas for a teacher’s gift. I also saw somewhere (probably Pinterest) a school supply “cake” where the crayons were layered at the bottom, then pencils in the middle of other school supplies being held with ribbon around the entire cake. It’s really cute and with tight school budgets, probably a great idea.

My current back-to-school supplies love is the line at Staples by Martha Stewart. I adore the colors (they remind be of Tiffany & Co.) and I have the teal notebook. I use it to take notes at conferences. The quality of the pages is thick and there’s a spot for a date and title of the page at the top. It’s a steal at only $4.99.