Almost time for the kids to go back to school. And along with that comes shopping for school supplies. I would really like to know the logic behind the school’s supply list that each child is supposed to bring in for the year.

• Crayons, 16-count, regular size: Not a big demand at first, but the stores have this gem costing a little over $2.00 while the 24-count box was only 22¢. Why in the world am I going to pay more for less colors? Not going to happen. If they really want to have a problem with it, I’m just going to remove 8 colors and change the number on the box with a Sharpie™.
• 200-count packs of loose leaf paper: I could not for the life of me find packs of 200-count filler paper. The store only had 150-count which I figured should just be as dandy. If they need more paper, I’ll go get some more. Actually, I just searched Office Depot’s site and found that they have 200-count packs… for twice the price of 150-count. Ha! No, thank you.
• P.O.U.C.’s: “You mean the pencils of unusual colors? I don’t think they exist,” was my reply to the search of the elusive red pencils. Not red colored pencils, but red leaded pencils. I think they have the kids self-grade their work sometimes. Or it could be for editing a paper. Or not… he’s only in the third grade. Are they making 8 year olds write essays yet? Anyway, the P.O.U.C.’s were eventually found at Walmart.
• Standard/Metric 12″ ruler: What? I think they mean an English/Metric ruler. Of course a 12″ metric ruler would be funnier.
• Pencils, sharpened: That’s fine and dandy, I suppose. Don’t they have pencil sharpeners in schools anymore? I remember way back when we had to sharpen our pencils using the big sharpeners by the door that could take some skin off your finger if you weren’t careful. That’s fun there. I need to find an electric pencil sharpener. Sharpening all of those pencils by hand is a pain and calluses are not fun.
• Dry-erase Markers: I really doubt the kids are actually using these themselves. This really sounds like a teacher supply which really should be bought by the teacher/school. The costs are getting the teacher down? Doesn’t the state of Ohio reimburse teachers for supplies they had to buy?
• Folders: Folders with pockets. Folders with pockets and prongs. Plastic folders with pockets and prongs. In six different colors. Red, yellow, blue, green, purple, and orange. That orange one is the tricky one. Thought I had found them but they didn’t have prongs. Almost had to make another Princess Bride reference.
• Teacher/Time specific supplies: Some supplies are only needed if my kindergartner is in a certain class or goes during the morning/afternoon. And we usually can’t find that out until a few days before school starts. Found out today what class Abi will be in but… her class says there’s 23 children. The other class says there are 13. I have a sneaking suspicion that some kids will be moved to balance out the classes. If that’s the case, we may have bought the wrong supplies…

Just a minor rant. Maybe it’s just us but it just irritates me that they don’t consider the parents when making the supply lists. I don’t think I need to run out to 4 different stores to find things. Plus they really should find out what stores are carrying in the sense of quantities (see paper & crayon bullets above). Well, they go back on Wednesday and should have everything by then. Wednesday? Why start in the middle of the week? Le sigh…

Tags: Kids, ranting, School

This entry was posted by Adam on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Life, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.