This year, when shopping for school supplies, we get to spend twice as much money! At least Jake is good and doesn’t mind using gear for a few years until it runs out. We got three years’ worth of use out of his last lunch bag and two out of his backpack, so that’s pretty good.
Right now Toys ‘R Us has a sale going on (today and Saturday I think), where you get a free lunch bag when you purchase a backpack. Not a bad deal! To make it even sweeter, I got a $5 off of $25 coupon in today’s mail, just as we were heading out the door. And our mission was a success. Jake (much to my delight!) chose a plain black backpack with lots of pockets over a character backpack. Of course, the deal is that we can put some cool patches on it. I can live with that. He found a nondescript Darth Vader lunch bag to go with it. The kid is growing up, and you can see it in his choices. He still loves tee-shirts with comic characters, though (of course, so does his father). Right now he’s concerned with convincing me to buy an Iron Man 2 tee-shirt. Next thing I know he’ll be more concerned with the best acne cream. Times goes by. It doesn’t seem that long ago that he was getting his gear for Kindergarten.
Which brings me to Noah! Noah insisted on a Spider-Man backpack, which struck me as funny because he isn’t a huge Spider-Man fan. He likes him (though who doesn’t?). But I think there are other characters, including superhero characters, he likes better. For his lunch bag, there was no question. It was Toy Story 3 all the way.
So now we’re just waiting for school supply lists. This year there was a PTA fundraiser where you could just send in a check and they’d purchase the supplies (though Staples, I think), but one grade was like $22 and the other was $25! Maybe that’s a deal for some people, but as you know, I’m a frugal shopper and I know I can do better than that for the basics (which they were). There’s still plenty of summer vacation to go, though, so we won’t get too ahead of ourselves here.
Wow ~ I’ve never heard of a school system purchasing supplies for you! I *love* back-to-school shopping, as you know. I’m really excited to pick out the kids’ items this year! I want to find a beach towel for Lucas that’s not a character and that’s super plush and cushiony.
We have that same school supply thing through our PTA. It was ok for third grade and for kindergarten for G this year, but the cost for the fourth grade kit was $45. Before deciding whether or not to order it I went out and priced everything at local stores, and it did come out to about the same amount. We weren’t thrilled with the quality of some of the Staples products last year, tho (notebook and notebook paper, specifically), so we held off. I’m hoping that with the back-to-school sales I’ll be able to get everything for at least a little less than the cost of the kit.