{ What it Takes to Send 5 Kids to School }

We have finally entered the time in our life when we are spanning our kids across 3 schools. I can’t believe I am old enough to have a high schooler! Where has the time gone? Seriously, I feel like we just moved here and I was getting ready to send Brianna off to kindergarten. I was so sad to see her grow up. My days with her at home were becoming shorter and shorter and the thought of all day kindergarten was almost too much to bear.

Now here we sit, and my days with her at home are becoming shorter and shorter, and I know that in four short years she will be heading off to college and I will be crying some big tears then. It’s funny to think that then we will be spanning FOUR schools. We will have kids in kindergarten through college. Such a weird thought.

As we were getting everyone ready for school this year, I was pretty good at getting supplies a little at a time when they were on sale, and grabbing this or that when I thought about it. I was so glad as the stores were packed the weekend before. As I started gathering the supplies, I would stack them up on one of our kitchen counters. The stack would grow and grow and grow! I couldn’t believe all the stuff that it would take to send these 5 back to school. I can’t imagine what’s it’s going to be when all 7 are in school.

Last night before school started, we finally got all their supplies in one place. This was one massive pile! The kids were so excited to see all their stuff. They kept walking by it while pointing out which things were theirs. There is something so exciting about getting new school supplies. I loved it as a kid, and I love it now too. New folders without any rips, perfectly sharpened crayons, a full bottle of glue, a fresh pack of lined paper…it always felt like a brand new start.

So, here is our mountain of supplies…Let’s get a bird’s eye view of all this stuff...and from the back. Wow, that’s a lot of stuff! And this is just the stuff to send to school. It doesn’t count any extra pencils and paper we may need at home for homework. Those are in a separate pile to go in a plastic bin in our front closet.

What exactly does it take to send them to school? Here’s a breakdown of it:

• 18 packs of lined paper
• 5 reams of white copy paper
• 10 1 inch 3 ring binders
• 3 1/2inch 3 ring binders
• 10 regular folders with prongs
• 5 plastic folders with prongs

• 20 glue sticks
• 4  boxes of 24pack of crayons
• 4 pairs of scissors
• 3 packs of markers
• 9 composition notebooks
• graph paper
• 4 highlighters
• 1 pack dry erase markers
• 4 big erasers
• 3 packs (25 each) of pencil top erasers
• 50 blue/black pens
• 10 red pens
• 64 mechanical pencils
• 144 pencils
• 3 packs of colored pencils (we managed to collect enough we had around the house)
• 2 pencil boxes
• 4 pencil bags

• portable 3 hole punch
• 13 packs of tabbed dividers
• 2 protractors
• 1 compass
• T1-84 plus silver edition graphing calculator
• daily planner notebook
• tape
• paper clips
• pack of sticky notes

• 6 boxes of Kleenex
• 3 rolls of paper towels
• 2 boxes of Bandaids
• 1 container of  Clorox wipes
• 2 plastic rulers
• 2 large hand sanitizers
• 4 mini hand sanitizers
• MLA Handbook

• 3 boxes of Ziploc baggies (quart, gallon, and snack size)
• index cards 3x5 and 4x6
• 5 new lunch box containers with 5 mini fruit containers

…and one pack of baby wipes that aren’t shown because I didn’t have any. Of all the things not to have, it’s kind of ironic we didn’t have those.

I was trying to think back to what I took to school. Lots of folders, lined paper, crayons (never the huge pack with a built in eraser), markers, pencils (not mechanical), erasers, spiral notebooks, a cardboard school box to put all of our pencils and crayons in, and sometimes 3 ring binders. I loved getting a new backpack and sometimes a new lunchbox-other times just brown bags (as we got older brown bags were way cooler than “baby” lunch boxes). I loved that I found in some old school stuff a list of school supplies from one of the years that my mom had kept. Man, how the times change.

I wonder what my grandkids will have to bring to school one day. Maybe by then it will just be an iPad. If I mentioned that to my own kids I’m sure they would think that would be awesome. There’s a great old fashioned part of me though that hopes that won’t completely happen. I hope they will never give up the need for crayons and markers and colored pencils. The thrill of opening a brand new box of crayons or a fresh box of markers-it makes the creative juices flow. It helps kids get to be kids for as long as they can.

It made me smile inside to see my freshman in high school get just as excited that she needed markers this year, as it did my kindergartener.

I love the start of school.