<p>keepmecruisin, at least there will be Labor Day sales for you to shop! It’s been so hot around here lately that I’m ready for fall.</p>
<p>I want my summer back too!!! </p>
<p>I decided some years ago that back to school shopping is a wast of time, particularly for clothing. The first several weeks of school need summer clothes (the ones they’ve been wearing all summer), and the Columbus Day sales are soon enough for new winter clothes. But I don’t have girls who want to be fashionable, so we’re talking jeans/shorts and t-shirts regardless.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who tells the kids to go school supply shopping among the leftovers from previous years? (Thank you, Costco.)</p>
<p>I used to go crazy buying boots and winter clothes in August. It took me a very long time to finally realize that these kids wear summer clothes at least through the end of September, so there is no rush. I bought my daughter a few things but will buy her some more when October rolls around. We bought school supplies at Costco and yes, we still have some things left over from last year. High school is easier because for the most part they can get what they want. No need to search for a 1 1/4 inch binder because the 2 inch is forbidden. Yesterday was exhausting- three hour practice, driving lesson, yearbook meeting, walk thru ( schedule), followed by sports meeting. My daughter goes through her schedule 2-3x and times herself and then picks the best route to get from one class to the next based on the flow of traffic. It’s a bit exhausting… LOL.</p>
<p>Me too! I love summer even when it’s no less relaxed than the rest of the year. It feels freer. The longer days, the higher temperatures, the time outdoors…ah! </p>
<p>We did no back-to-school shopping at all this year. D ordered her books online and is buying supplies only as needed. She has so many binders etc collected over the years that it’s easy to recycle them. Clothing is a sore point. It’s no fun shopping with this D who doesn’t fit into most things she tries and I flat out hate shopping so it’s something we both avoid. She had a growth spurt (I think she grew 4 inches!) over the past year though and has reached a normal height so she should have more success going forward.</p>
<p>3girls3cats, I’m not a shopper either. I never liked the back-to-school clothes shopping as a kid, and minimize this with my kids. One of my Ds likes to shop for clothes, the other hates it.</p>
<p>Since preschool, I have let them pick out one new outfit for the first day of school. Shopping happened when we had a weather forecast for the first day, a few days before school started. Other than that, they get new clothes when they need them throughout the year. This year’s new back-to-school clothes for D15 was one pair of jeans. D14 got jeans, shorts off the clearance rack, one shirt and two tanks.</p>
<p>twogirls, I agree that supplies are so much easier in high school. The kids get what they know they’ll need and use. I remember one year the required supply list included a 1" red non-flexible binder. Of course there weren’t any 1" red binders anywhere. I sent the kid in with one that was dark-pink-is-red-enough. This year D15 declared that she had to have a huge box of colored pencils because she’d have to do drawings in AP Bio. I let her get away with that one.</p>
<p>Are my kids the only ones who absolutely destroy their binders? I just took a look at the pile of last year’s stuff (which has been sitting on the dog crate all summer lol) and they look like they’ve been through the war. Saw that Staples gives $2 back to recycle binders…we are definitely doing that!! Except for the English one that D burned with her friends, can’t bring that one back ;). S’18 needs the TI-84 this year so that’s another $100. He also needs black dress pants, black shirt and blue tie for game days. Mandatory or you sit the bench. Looks like I will be hitting Kohl’s Labor Day sales after all b/c he only has navy pants. D needs to dress up for game days too but she has a couple of cute dresses from the last cruise we took in June. After that we’ll consider jeans and a nice top as dressed up. The girls don’t get benched for not dressing up thank goodness.</p>
<p>Keepmecruisin, haha, yeah my kids all did their fair share of destroying binders! We have a ready supply though because inevitably one of them would need a brand new binder 6 weeks before school was ending and it would still be in almost pristine shape come September. And somehow I always manage to find an unused binder in D’s mess. I didn’t know about the Staples recycling offer!</p>
<p>Uniforms, concert dress, calculators–yup, those are all items that you end up having to buy, like it or not, though I do have some not so pleasant memories of desperately rifling through all our closets to find concert black for a performance that evening!</p>
<p>I don’t know if Staples is still selling the $10 coupon that gives you 15% off school supply purchases, but you break even at $67 worth of school supplies. Unfortunately, the TI-84s are excluded from the promo but the 15% off does work in combination with the $2/binder trade-in allowance.</p>
<p>Binders do seem to get destroyed every year, but we always seem to have a surplus hanging around the house. I think it’s because the “grown ups” get handed documents in binders that either don’t need to be kept, are duplicated elsewhere or are better kept out of binders, so those extras go into the supply pile. My basement is LOADED with supplies. Of course, that doesn’t explain why I can never find the right color pen when I need it.</p>
<p>D15 uses a huge zipped binder for all her classes. When I was a kid we all used only one big binder for everything, with looseleaf paper and tabbed dividers. I guess she’s gone retro. Luckily last year’s (yes, 3cats, second because the first fell apart) binder is still in good condition.</p>
<p>D14 color codes her classes, with matching (cheap flexible) binders, notebooks, and folders. She even uses the same color when writing her assignments in her planner. I wonder what she’s doing about her colors this year since she has multiple English and history classes.</p>
<p>Connecticut has a sales tax holiday on clothes, the week before school begins. So that’s an incentive to join the shopping herd. My 2015 son’s older sister headed back to college early this year–going to be an RA–so she couldn’t be his fashion advisor.</p>
<p>She, of course–goddess of all things high school–is the only one in the family who can save baby brother from various kinds of “social suicide”–from his choice of clothes to what’s uncool for his Facebook page.</p>
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<p>Me too! Mine had a denim cover and I doodled all over it in different colors of marker. I wish I still had those…the doodles would be all about what I was thinking about that year. I have no idea why the school, and she, think it’s easier to carry 5-6 different little binders around.</p>
<p>We don’t do back to school clothes shopping, if she needs something at any point in the year I buy it with her. </p>
<p>When I was in high school (in NYC) my mom would hand me something like $100 in cash every September and I’d take that down to Canal Jean Company (carpenter pants in 20 colors! military webbed belts in 50!) and to the retro and thrift shops on St. Mark’s place (army pants with lace!) and that would be that, she wouldn’t buy anything else until it was time for summer clothes.</p>
<p>My D now loves Plato’s Closet in addition to Old Navy, etc.</p>
<p>OHMom, I bet you doodled on your grocery bag book covers too. The stretchy fabric book covers the kids all love are not conducive to doodling. D15 does have amazing drawings on her zippered binder cover. I should take a picture for posterity. </p>
<p>I think we’ve done something right when our Ds are not only willing but enthusiastic about shopping at second hand stores.</p>
<p>My kids absolutely destroy their binders. They also want new book covers every year. I don’t understand it, but that’s the little treats we gave to them.</p>
<p>My daughter usually has destroyed binders by January and we need to replace them. The metal rings don’t close fully and all the papers come out. She also goes through index cards at a pace that I have never seen before. Her stuff takes over my house during the school year- books, binders, index cards, papers etc are in piles all over my kitchen and living room. She is like a mad scientist. Freshmen year we added butterfly cages to the mix all over the house for a research paper. I am trying not to complain because I will miss it one day.</p>
<p>Nothing says last day of summer like helping your oldest memorize the presidents for APUSH and helping your youngest get his last elementary school “me bag” together. School year 13-14…BRING IT ON!!!</p>
<p>We have an 8th grader (class of 2018) and I just realized that we’ve completed our last required school supply list that includes paper towels, tissue boxes and disinfecting wipes.</p>
<p>As for our 2015er she doesn’t start until Wednesday and I’m looking at tomorrow as a big PSAT study day. I know she started reviewing for APUSH a few weeks ago and will see if she knows all the presidents–thanks keepmecruisin for the idea.</p>
<p>I feel so out of the loop. We don’t start school until next week! My daughter is not taking APUSH but she has been reading books in Spanish and yesterday she reviewed her tenses for AP Spanish. Yesterday she had a yearbook meeting where one of the girls was telling ugly tales of AP physics- seems there is a lot of outside the box thinking ( ?) which is fine because honors chem also required a tremendous amount of outside the box thinking and she did very well. Who knows… If I had to do this I seriously doubt I could!! My daughter decided against APUSH because she felt that the amount of reading would put her over the edge- her schedule is busy enough. SAT tutoring starts Wednesday. Good luck to everyone as we begin junior year!</p>
<p>Crepes…believe me, it wasn’t my idea. It’s on the summer assignment list to memorize them all with election years and political parties. I’ve been telling the D that if I were a teacher I’d be quizzing them on it in the first week. I finally convinced her to let me help. YouTube is her savior right now lol.</p>
<p>Whoa, anybody watching the scores come in for 2014 NMSF cutoff? Looks like they went up a fair amount this year, although still not a lot of data yet for most states. Apparently Ohio jumped 3 points from last year. Yikes.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/1427971-class-2014-nmsf-qualifying-scores.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/1427971-class-2014-nmsf-qualifying-scores.html</a></p>