Sharpen the pencils, make the lunches…

It’s that time again….summer is coming to an end and school will begin soon! I don’t know about you, but our summer has flown by. I’m excited for school to start and sad for summer to end all at the same time {Kadon is excited, Garner is not..pretty typical for their personalities:)}. With school starting there are so many things to think about, buy, and prepare for.

School supplies: Do you buy your kids supplies way in advance, last minute, or from the school pre-packaged? I usually buy most of my boys stuff for the following year after school starts and everything is on clearance. I bought probably 80% of my kids supplies last year for less than $20! Of course that meant I had to find a place to store it for a year, but it didn’t take up much room, so no biggie to me. The remaining items I bought a couple weeks ago…I’m not a last minute person with things like that. Sometimes it pays to be last minute because a lot of stores will put most supplies on sale prior to school starting, but you run the risk of having to go to multiple stores to complete your list….may be more work than it is worth to save a few bucks.

Backpacks: Do you buy your kids a new cheaper backpack every year or invest a little more for one that will last a few years? My oldest son’s kinder year I let him pick out a cheap backpack from Toys R Us and had intentions on replacing it yearly or as needed….that thing barely made it through the year! After that I let him pick one from Potterybarn Kids and it is going on it’s 3rd year, did the same with my second son that is going to 1st grade. I love Potterybarn and have always had good luck with their products. A friend told me that Lands End and Jansport have warranties on their backpacks, hard to beat that. I figured my boys would want new backpacks yearly, but they LOVE theirs, plus they are monogrammed with their names.

Lunch boxes: Do you buy new or use the same for a while? My boys lunch boxes seem to go missing at random times through out the year, so I let them pick whatever they want from Target (as long as it is PVC free) and use til another is needed. Luckily theirs have always turned back up, but we have a back up and I don’t stress about it much since we paid about $10 for them. I just know if I spent $25+ on the one from PBK it would be gone in a week. Ha! As for what I use inside the lunch box to hold food, my favorite containers are from Lunch Bots, they are stainless and toxin free, easy to care for too! What do you use?

Clothes: I don’t necessarily go “back to school” shopping, I just pick up stuff randomly over the summer as needed. One of our contributors, Lisa recently did a post on back to school fashions…check it out HERE. Do you have any special plans or a favorite place to shop for back to school clothes? The only thing I do make sure my kids have is a new pair of tennis shoes…it just always seems that they have either worn out the ones they have during summer or their feet have grown, but they always need a new pair right before school.

I am pretty much done with getting my boys ready for school in 2 weeks…school supplies are bought, labeled, and in backpacks ready to take to “meet the teacher” night, clothes and shoes are in the closet ready to go (minus Kadon needing a few pair of shorts), lunch boxes and food containers are ready and labeled (luckily we have everything from last year, so I didn’t have to buy new), and I will have “back to school” treats for their teachers ready by the weekend! Now the only thing we need to do is make sure the boys are in bed on time every night, and my kids love their sleep so we only have to tweak that by about 30 minutes. We put our boys to bed very early during the school year and they are better off for it. We will have them in bed by 7:30! The biggest thing none of us Krause’s are looking forward to is waking up early 🙁 Boo.

What do you do to get the kiddos ready to go back? How do you prepare yourself? Are you and the kids looking forward to it or dreading it?