school supplies!

In article , NL says...

Ericka Kammerer schrieb:
NL wrote:

One teacher in pre-school (remember, germany, different system, I'm
talking about the grade before 1st grade) specified crayons that come in
blocks. there is only one brand which is super organic, kind of
anthrophosophic, all ingredients have to be collected by virgins no
older that 14 in the light of the full moon,... otherwise I can not
explain the price of that box of 12 crayons which was a whopping 18€.
Sure, they were made from beeswax and you could probably eat them for
lunch, but seriously, 6 y.o. kids will draw with anything, they don't
need crayons for 18€! And yes, I did tell her that that amount of money
buys a very nice birthday or Christmas present in our family.

They are exorbitantly expensive, but have you ever
used them? They are *beautiful* to work with. They feel
great, they smell great, they blend like a dream, the
colors are true and rich. Are they a luxury? Yes, no doubt.
Do I think that in an ideal world children would get to use
lovely art supplies? Absolutely. I think it makes all the
difference. Here, you would be very unlikely to find a public
school requiring those, but many of the Montessori and virtually
all the Waldorf schools provide them (but at that point, you're
paying some hefty tuition ;-) ). I buy those or similar crayons
at home for mine when they're young because they're such a pleasure,
and so great when learning colors and color mixing and so forth.

Sam used them maybe 5 or 10 times. Since they're blocks and not pencil
shaped he has trouble holding them in a way that's comfortable for him.

I think art supplies should be of a high quality _if_ you intend to use
them often. But if I draw a picture once a month the el cheapo Aldi
crayons work just fine. They're about 2€ a pack with as many colors as
the expensive ones. Sure they break and they're not as cool and they
don't smell as good, but right now I don't even know where Sams
expensive Crayons went, I think they got "lost" at school at some point.
Just like the 3 shirts he had (one after the other) to use as an apron.

That's probably another reason to specify brand. If a lot of parents buy
off-brands for something where it matters like Crayons, then once the kids
discover the difference the good ones will be in demand and dissappear. If
everyone has Crayola, everyone can use the Crayolas.

Banty

Anne Rogers wrote:
If you want to get stressed, I have a good recipe...

...try to get school supplies on the evening before school starts!

When I was teaching, they had to buy their gym uniforms from the
school store. It was shorts and a reversible T-shirt. That was so
they could wear the shirt with the yellow side out or the black side
out and be on easily discernable teams. They could also buy pencils
and paper and other such supplies.

They had to have two combination locks - one for their regular locker
and one for the gym locker. I was teaching 6th grade and some of them
had a lot of trouble with the combination lock. For a long time after
I got married, I still had nightmares about forgetting my combination
on my lock.

I required a ruler with metric on one side, duotang folders, paper for
the folders and a couple of composition books, plus pens and pencils.
I would get flack for this list because what parents had often bought
instead was a Trapper Keeper or spiral notebooks EVEN THOUGH they had
the list in advance which said not to get those items AND what I
wanted them to get was cheaper. But mostly I got flack about the
ruler which parents apparently thought was an unreasonable item to
require. The other items were all agreed to by our team of teachers.

Trapper Keepers were messy and they didn't work very well for trapping
or keeping. Papers that were handed in were supposed to be on 3
ring paper, and could then be put in the folders when they were
returned. Or they would do their work in the folder or composition
book and turn in the whole book.

The spiral notebooks would get little pieces of paper all over the
floor when they tore out the paper to hand in, and during the school
year, the janitors really only did the halls and large public areas.
Teachers had to police their own areas. The composition books were
specifically so that they could NOT tear the pages out.

I don't buy supplies from a
grocery store, as they are too expensive. I buy them from places like
Target, Walmart, etc.. And yes, I had to have some wine Monday night to calm
my nerves. Chocolate doesn't do it for me ;o)

Interesting, the supermarket in question was Fred Mayer and now I've
spoken to people today, it seems that the reason they were sold out was
that it was the cheapest place, cheaper than office depot and staples
anyway. We do have target, but it's on the edge of the city whereas the
3 mentioned above are central and all quite close to each other. We
don't have a Walmart for quite a way and the nearest in each direction
are also in notoriously busy areas, no one seems to think it's worth the
trip!

Cheers
Anne

At secondary, Kiddo needed a specified calculator, but that was so the
teachers knew how it operated. Apart from that they are fairly lax.
Maybe it is because we have school uniforms, and teachers are used to
the slight variations between brands of white shirts etc.

Though whenever I've come across that it's usually been sold by whoever
is making the requirement and at a reduced costs, so our school strongly
recommended a particular scientific calculator and bought huge boxes of
it and sold them for 7 pounds I think, they were 9.99 in Argos.


I think there are always some things specific to schools. For instance,
when my eldest started at school, we were just told a plain t-shirt for
PE. At the end-of-year sports day, I found out that they would also
need a plain t-shirt in house colours for the games. If you had been to
the school (a significant number of parents had), or had older kids
there, you knew about this already. If this was your first child, you
didn't know until a few days before the games.

I expect it with uniform, but then they don't do uniforms in schools
here, but then seem to get very strict with uniform for extra curricular
activities, nothing wrong with that, but it's an odd mental shift, I
mean I expect kids to wear dancewear for dance, but not for it to be
prescribed exactly which leotard, tights, colour of shoes etc they wore,
it annoys me that having a boy and a girl one has to have white shoes
and the other pink, ideally I'd have got white and passed it down unless
a pink pair was needed for a show or exam.

How about this for pressu J needs a red school sweatshirt. They
changed the design, and the new designs weren't going to be available
until yesterday. The suppliers hadn't sent any! New sweatshirts not
available until the morning that school started. Luckily she still
fitted into the old one...

How frustrating, I remember we had a similar problem with swimming
costumes at school, the school had used one design that had become very
old fashioned, but the one they chose to replace it with, the first
batch was faulty and the fabric disintgrated in one swimming class,
thankfully the spotted that before more than a handful had been sold,
but resolving it took several months, possibly longer, as I know I only
ever had one school swimming costume, which means the same size must
have lasted me from when I got it to age 16. However swimming costumes
are only needed for swimming and they did concede that you could wear
any swimming costume until the regular one had been sorted out.

Cheers
Anne

I think that's a lot of the issue-that there's some assumption that parents
know what's going on.

It's not just school, it's life! There are so many things that are just
assumed, but don't necessarily have a clear explaination anywhere. An
example of this was when we got our first property tax bill, DH paid it,
after he'd done it and I found out, I remembered something about it
being paid in with the mortgage and I only knew that because a friend
had gone through her break down of fees due on the day of escrow so I
could estimate ours and she murmered something about paying some tax and
them holding it, or something. So I had no clear idea of what really
happened and DH had missed it completely. The bill didn't say anything
like "for information only", it was as far as we could tell the same
bill that anyone would receive, regardless of how it was going to be
paid. Well, if you get a bill you pay it, so he did. Then when we got
the next bill, it was zero because we'd paid the last one twice so what
was now due had already been credited to our account. When we looked at
the mortgage statement, there were definitely some hints that tax was
being taken, but it wasn't clear and through the whole process of
getting a mortgage you give so many numbers that how can you know what
the purpose of each was, they take homeowner dues into consideration
when determining your loan amount, but they don't take your money and
redirect it for you!

It turned out the be quite inconvenient as because it was the first
payment of a split year the tax people took it as 2nd payment rather
than overpayment, so would not refund and mortgage never return anything
whilst it's ongoing. Having just moved internationally we could have
done with that cash rather than having a tiny bit removed from our
capital and fractionally less interest over 30 years, our monthly
payment dropped by a few dollars, but it was a drop in the ocean
compared to the tax bill, which could have paid a few months preschool.

Cheers
Anne

Try the (state) juniors #1's going into. They need for the start of year 3:
(all named of course)
pencil
pencil crayons
felt tips
ruler
glue stick
homework folder
rubber
pencil sharpener
small pencil case.


Actually, I wouldn't be so bothered about such a list and I could have
bought 95% of it in the supermarket last night as the only thing they
were completely our of was glue sticks. Our list specified things like
"8 large Crayola washable crayons - only 8 and must be large", so of
course the 8 packs of crayons are the same price as the 64 pack and more
expensive than other available sizes. I could also have put those things
together from things in the house, possibly not the glue stick, but
otherwise we'd have something that would do.

What bemuses be about this particular school and it's supply list was
things like having to get 4 glue sticks, then when we got there today,
putting them all in one box and as it is a private preschool, there
isn't the reasoning of it being a saving from the school budget. They
did give us a pen to label them, though I'd already done it, but it
strikes me that over the year, someone is going to spend a lot of time
making sure each child uses their own glue stick, with 5 year olds the
communal box of glue is probably easier.

I'd also been wondering about the fact the list didn't include a pencil,
then found that had been placed, along with a ruler in a pocket hung
over their chair, makes me wonder how they determine we provide x and not y!

Oh well that part of things is done now, my new confusion is that when I
asked at the end of last year whether lunch ran all year or not, I was
told it did and then today I've been told it doesn't start til October,
which rather throws a spanner in the works, I chose the particular class
DD is in based on the fact she can stay for lunch on Tuesdays and now
I've got to rearrange my schedule for a month!

Cheers
Anne

Donna Metler wrote:
For future reference, most schools/districts have their supply lists online
(and often posted in stores like Target) long before they send out the
packets. There's also enough uniformity from year to year that you can
generally predict on some things if you've seen the prior year's list. In
the schools here, you can count on yellow #2 pencils, 24 count crayola
crayons, and wide lined notebook paper being on the list, as well as 2
pocket folders with prongs in a rainbow of colors. You can also count on
probably not needing a binder for anything until grade 6, scissors never
being on the supply list (they're considered weapons, and teachers are
required to keep them in their control and hand them out as needed. Same
with compasses), and spiral notebooks generally being excluded in favor of
composition notebooks.

This year it's a private kindergarten that's part of a preschool, so
whatever happens there will be a change of school next year and I did
notice they had supply lists at the front of the store, though bizarrely
only for schools I didn't recognise the name of, I suspect this must be
because they ran out of close by schools and these schools are further
away!

Providing paper will be a new one for me, in the UK, whether public or
private school, paper was always provided, you'd provide the writing
implement in secondary school, but paper was doled out, and by the time
I was in 6th form, they were giving you 500 sheets at a time, but
depending on which subjects you did, you'd also have to collect 10
sheets of logarithmic graph paper and any other special paper. We were
also provided with folders, which was quite helpful in some ways, as
everyone had the same colour for each subject, blue for chemistry,
orange for physics etc, which somehow made it easier all round, if I was
getting folders from my locker and couldn't remember what class I had, I
could just glance around and see someone from my class, see what they
were holding and jog my memory. It's funny how people associate colours,
a training course I went to once had it's paper work prepared by someone
who must have had a pack of mixed colours, then at the 2nd meeting there
was lots of confusion when people who walked in late saw other colours
and thought they had missed a hand out and what not!

I agree it's very prescriptive. One of my friends commented that the only
thing her 1st grader got to pick out this year was the color of her pencil
sharpener. Between the school system's uniform dress code (white polo
shirts, navy or khaki slacks, shorts, or skirts) and the supply list, there
wasn't much else to choose.

I think everything points to school uniforms being overall a good thing
and I can see that there are benefits to uniformity in supplies, it just
makes it hard work and inflexible, I mean some people might prefer
narrow lined paper, or only one side or something and with pencils some
might like a harder pencil than others to write with, I know I prefer to
have a clicky pencil preferably with a harder than average lead. As
Debbie has commented, the government in the UK now officially
discourages anything being supplied only by one company.

Cheers
Anne

And why do parents continue to agree to buy all this stuff, especially
down to the specified brand? If you can get the generic or cheaper, in
the same color and count, why isn't that acceptable? I am a homeschooler
and I keep finding it strange the things parents put up with when it
comes to the schools. Every parent with school kids I know complain and
complain but no one does anything about it(or tries to)!

It was only Crayola that was definitely specified as a brand and to be
honest, I'd have bought it anyway, for the crayons, because I know they
definitely are washable and I think they are slightly better quality,
some are very plasticy and you have to press hard to transfer any colour
to the paper. With markers again, I'd probably still have gone with
crayola, I've had so many cheap markers over the years that didn't last
long that I now choose them.

Cheers
Anne

In germany we have different lined paper for the first 3 years of
school. We start with three lines in a large format, then 2nd grade has
the same lines but at a smaller scale, third grade only has the middle
two lines.

Ahhh, so that explains it! I think the French must have something
similar. There was one point in time where the exchange rate meant that
buying school supplies in France was a reasonable thing to do and I was
always confused over the paper, which I think had 3 light lines in
between each bold line. I didn't need it as we got our paper supplied,
but I still bought the odd bit and no one batted an eyelid. Our school
had quite strict rules about school bags and they ones that were
permitted were generally quite expensive and didn't last any better than
the cheaper ones I bought in France or maybe another European country
most summers.

I noticed on Australian soaps that they all have the same school bag!

Cheers
Anne

That's probably another reason to specify brand. If a lot of parents buy
off-brands for something where it matters like Crayons, then once the kids
discover the difference the good ones will be in demand and dissappear. If
everyone has Crayola, everyone can use the Crayolas.

but at least a box of crayola isn't 18 euros, a euro is worth more than
a dollar now, but I don't know exactly how much more, but it makes that
box around 25 dollars, I think I payed 3 something dollars for crayola
last night, which is quite a difference and the problem is, once to
start along the line of must have a particular type, it can go the wrong
way, either specify a cheap type to include everyone or an expensive
type to give the kids the best.

Cheers
Anne