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#21
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school supplies!
In article , NL says...
Ericka Kammerer schrieb: NL wrote: One teacher in pre-school (remember, germany, different system, I'm talking about the grade before 1st grade) specified crayons that come in blocks. there is only one brand which is super organic, kind of anthrophosophic, all ingredients have to be collected by virgins no older that 14 in the light of the full moon,... otherwise I can not explain the price of that box of 12 crayons which was a whopping 18€. Sure, they were made from beeswax and you could probably eat them for lunch, but seriously, 6 y.o. kids will draw with anything, they don't need crayons for 18€! And yes, I did tell her that that amount of money buys a very nice birthday or Christmas present in our family. They are exorbitantly expensive, but have you ever used them? They are *beautiful* to work with. They feel great, they smell great, they blend like a dream, the colors are true and rich. Are they a luxury? Yes, no doubt. Do I think that in an ideal world children would get to use lovely art supplies? Absolutely. I think it makes all the difference. Here, you would be very unlikely to find a public school requiring those, but many of the Montessori and virtually all the Waldorf schools provide them (but at that point, you're paying some hefty tuition ;-) ). I buy those or similar crayons at home for mine when they're young because they're such a pleasure, and so great when learning colors and color mixing and so forth. Sam used them maybe 5 or 10 times. Since they're blocks and not pencil shaped he has trouble holding them in a way that's comfortable for him. I think art supplies should be of a high quality _if_ you intend to use them often. But if I draw a picture once a month the el cheapo Aldi crayons work just fine. They're about 2€ a pack with as many colors as the expensive ones. Sure they break and they're not as cool and they don't smell as good, but right now I don't even know where Sams expensive Crayons went, I think they got "lost" at school at some point. Just like the 3 shirts he had (one after the other) to use as an apron. That's probably another reason to specify brand. If a lot of parents buy off-brands for something where it matters like Crayons, then once the kids discover the difference the good ones will be in demand and dissappear. If everyone has Crayola, everyone can use the Crayolas. Banty |
#22
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school supplies!
Anne Rogers wrote:
If you want to get stressed, I have a good recipe... ...try to get school supplies on the evening before school starts! When I was teaching, they had to buy their gym uniforms from the school store. It was shorts and a reversible T-shirt. That was so they could wear the shirt with the yellow side out or the black side out and be on easily discernable teams. They could also buy pencils and paper and other such supplies. They had to have two combination locks - one for their regular locker and one for the gym locker. I was teaching 6th grade and some of them had a lot of trouble with the combination lock. For a long time after I got married, I still had nightmares about forgetting my combination on my lock. I required a ruler with metric on one side, duotang folders, paper for the folders and a couple of composition books, plus pens and pencils. I would get flack for this list because what parents had often bought instead was a Trapper Keeper or spiral notebooks EVEN THOUGH they had the list in advance which said not to get those items AND what I wanted them to get was cheaper. But mostly I got flack about the ruler which parents apparently thought was an unreasonable item to require. The other items were all agreed to by our team of teachers. Trapper Keepers were messy and they didn't work very well for trapping or keeping. Papers that were handed in were supposed to be on 3 ring paper, and could then be put in the folders when they were returned. Or they would do their work in the folder or composition book and turn in the whole book. The spiral notebooks would get little pieces of paper all over the floor when they tore out the paper to hand in, and during the school year, the janitors really only did the halls and large public areas. Teachers had to police their own areas. The composition books were specifically so that they could NOT tear the pages out. |
#23
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school supplies!
I don't buy supplies from a
grocery store, as they are too expensive. I buy them from places like Target, Walmart, etc.. And yes, I had to have some wine Monday night to calm my nerves. Chocolate doesn't do it for me ;o) Interesting, the supermarket in question was Fred Mayer and now I've spoken to people today, it seems that the reason they were sold out was that it was the cheapest place, cheaper than office depot and staples anyway. We do have target, but it's on the edge of the city whereas the 3 mentioned above are central and all quite close to each other. We don't have a Walmart for quite a way and the nearest in each direction are also in notoriously busy areas, no one seems to think it's worth the trip! Cheers Anne |
#24
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school supplies!
At secondary, Kiddo needed a specified calculator, but that was so the teachers knew how it operated. Apart from that they are fairly lax. Maybe it is because we have school uniforms, and teachers are used to the slight variations between brands of white shirts etc. Though whenever I've come across that it's usually been sold by whoever is making the requirement and at a reduced costs, so our school strongly recommended a particular scientific calculator and bought huge boxes of it and sold them for 7 pounds I think, they were 9.99 in Argos. I think there are always some things specific to schools. For instance, when my eldest started at school, we were just told a plain t-shirt for PE. At the end-of-year sports day, I found out that they would also need a plain t-shirt in house colours for the games. If you had been to the school (a significant number of parents had), or had older kids there, you knew about this already. If this was your first child, you didn't know until a few days before the games. I expect it with uniform, but then they don't do uniforms in schools here, but then seem to get very strict with uniform for extra curricular activities, nothing wrong with that, but it's an odd mental shift, I mean I expect kids to wear dancewear for dance, but not for it to be prescribed exactly which leotard, tights, colour of shoes etc they wore, it annoys me that having a boy and a girl one has to have white shoes and the other pink, ideally I'd have got white and passed it down unless a pink pair was needed for a show or exam. How about this for pressu J needs a red school sweatshirt. They changed the design, and the new designs weren't going to be available until yesterday. The suppliers hadn't sent any! New sweatshirts not available until the morning that school started. Luckily she still fitted into the old one... How frustrating, I remember we had a similar problem with swimming costumes at school, the school had used one design that had become very old fashioned, but the one they chose to replace it with, the first batch was faulty and the fabric disintgrated in one swimming class, thankfully the spotted that before more than a handful had been sold, but resolving it took several months, possibly longer, as I know I only ever had one school swimming costume, which means the same size must have lasted me from when I got it to age 16. However swimming costumes are only needed for swimming and they did concede that you could wear any swimming costume until the regular one had been sorted out. Cheers Anne |
#25
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school supplies!
I think that's a lot of the issue-that there's some assumption that parents know what's going on. It's not just school, it's life! There are so many things that are just assumed, but don't necessarily have a clear explaination anywhere. An example of this was when we got our first property tax bill, DH paid it, after he'd done it and I found out, I remembered something about it being paid in with the mortgage and I only knew that because a friend had gone through her break down of fees due on the day of escrow so I could estimate ours and she murmered something about paying some tax and them holding it, or something. So I had no clear idea of what really happened and DH had missed it completely. The bill didn't say anything like "for information only", it was as far as we could tell the same bill that anyone would receive, regardless of how it was going to be paid. Well, if you get a bill you pay it, so he did. Then when we got the next bill, it was zero because we'd paid the last one twice so what was now due had already been credited to our account. When we looked at the mortgage statement, there were definitely some hints that tax was being taken, but it wasn't clear and through the whole process of getting a mortgage you give so many numbers that how can you know what the purpose of each was, they take homeowner dues into consideration when determining your loan amount, but they don't take your money and redirect it for you! It turned out the be quite inconvenient as because it was the first payment of a split year the tax people took it as 2nd payment rather than overpayment, so would not refund and mortgage never return anything whilst it's ongoing. Having just moved internationally we could have done with that cash rather than having a tiny bit removed from our capital and fractionally less interest over 30 years, our monthly payment dropped by a few dollars, but it was a drop in the ocean compared to the tax bill, which could have paid a few months preschool. Cheers Anne |
#26
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school supplies!
Try the (state) juniors #1's going into. They need for the start of year 3: (all named of course) pencil pencil crayons felt tips ruler glue stick homework folder rubber pencil sharpener small pencil case. Actually, I wouldn't be so bothered about such a list and I could have bought 95% of it in the supermarket last night as the only thing they were completely our of was glue sticks. Our list specified things like "8 large Crayola washable crayons - only 8 and must be large", so of course the 8 packs of crayons are the same price as the 64 pack and more expensive than other available sizes. I could also have put those things together from things in the house, possibly not the glue stick, but otherwise we'd have something that would do. What bemuses be about this particular school and it's supply list was things like having to get 4 glue sticks, then when we got there today, putting them all in one box and as it is a private preschool, there isn't the reasoning of it being a saving from the school budget. They did give us a pen to label them, though I'd already done it, but it strikes me that over the year, someone is going to spend a lot of time making sure each child uses their own glue stick, with 5 year olds the communal box of glue is probably easier. I'd also been wondering about the fact the list didn't include a pencil, then found that had been placed, along with a ruler in a pocket hung over their chair, makes me wonder how they determine we provide x and not y! Oh well that part of things is done now, my new confusion is that when I asked at the end of last year whether lunch ran all year or not, I was told it did and then today I've been told it doesn't start til October, which rather throws a spanner in the works, I chose the particular class DD is in based on the fact she can stay for lunch on Tuesdays and now I've got to rearrange my schedule for a month! Cheers Anne |
#27
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school supplies!
Donna Metler wrote:
For future reference, most schools/districts have their supply lists online (and often posted in stores like Target) long before they send out the packets. There's also enough uniformity from year to year that you can generally predict on some things if you've seen the prior year's list. In the schools here, you can count on yellow #2 pencils, 24 count crayola crayons, and wide lined notebook paper being on the list, as well as 2 pocket folders with prongs in a rainbow of colors. You can also count on probably not needing a binder for anything until grade 6, scissors never being on the supply list (they're considered weapons, and teachers are required to keep them in their control and hand them out as needed. Same with compasses), and spiral notebooks generally being excluded in favor of composition notebooks. This year it's a private kindergarten that's part of a preschool, so whatever happens there will be a change of school next year and I did notice they had supply lists at the front of the store, though bizarrely only for schools I didn't recognise the name of, I suspect this must be because they ran out of close by schools and these schools are further away! Providing paper will be a new one for me, in the UK, whether public or private school, paper was always provided, you'd provide the writing implement in secondary school, but paper was doled out, and by the time I was in 6th form, they were giving you 500 sheets at a time, but depending on which subjects you did, you'd also have to collect 10 sheets of logarithmic graph paper and any other special paper. We were also provided with folders, which was quite helpful in some ways, as everyone had the same colour for each subject, blue for chemistry, orange for physics etc, which somehow made it easier all round, if I was getting folders from my locker and couldn't remember what class I had, I could just glance around and see someone from my class, see what they were holding and jog my memory. It's funny how people associate colours, a training course I went to once had it's paper work prepared by someone who must have had a pack of mixed colours, then at the 2nd meeting there was lots of confusion when people who walked in late saw other colours and thought they had missed a hand out and what not! I agree it's very prescriptive. One of my friends commented that the only thing her 1st grader got to pick out this year was the color of her pencil sharpener. Between the school system's uniform dress code (white polo shirts, navy or khaki slacks, shorts, or skirts) and the supply list, there wasn't much else to choose. I think everything points to school uniforms being overall a good thing and I can see that there are benefits to uniformity in supplies, it just makes it hard work and inflexible, I mean some people might prefer narrow lined paper, or only one side or something and with pencils some might like a harder pencil than others to write with, I know I prefer to have a clicky pencil preferably with a harder than average lead. As Debbie has commented, the government in the UK now officially discourages anything being supplied only by one company. Cheers Anne |
#28
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school supplies!
And why do parents continue to agree to buy all this stuff, especially down to the specified brand? If you can get the generic or cheaper, in the same color and count, why isn't that acceptable? I am a homeschooler and I keep finding it strange the things parents put up with when it comes to the schools. Every parent with school kids I know complain and complain but no one does anything about it(or tries to)! It was only Crayola that was definitely specified as a brand and to be honest, I'd have bought it anyway, for the crayons, because I know they definitely are washable and I think they are slightly better quality, some are very plasticy and you have to press hard to transfer any colour to the paper. With markers again, I'd probably still have gone with crayola, I've had so many cheap markers over the years that didn't last long that I now choose them. Cheers Anne |
#29
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school supplies!
In germany we have different lined paper for the first 3 years of school. We start with three lines in a large format, then 2nd grade has the same lines but at a smaller scale, third grade only has the middle two lines. Ahhh, so that explains it! I think the French must have something similar. There was one point in time where the exchange rate meant that buying school supplies in France was a reasonable thing to do and I was always confused over the paper, which I think had 3 light lines in between each bold line. I didn't need it as we got our paper supplied, but I still bought the odd bit and no one batted an eyelid. Our school had quite strict rules about school bags and they ones that were permitted were generally quite expensive and didn't last any better than the cheaper ones I bought in France or maybe another European country most summers. I noticed on Australian soaps that they all have the same school bag! Cheers Anne |
#30
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school supplies!
That's probably another reason to specify brand. If a lot of parents buy off-brands for something where it matters like Crayons, then once the kids discover the difference the good ones will be in demand and dissappear. If everyone has Crayola, everyone can use the Crayolas. but at least a box of crayola isn't 18 euros, a euro is worth more than a dollar now, but I don't know exactly how much more, but it makes that box around 25 dollars, I think I payed 3 something dollars for crayola last night, which is quite a difference and the problem is, once to start along the line of must have a particular type, it can go the wrong way, either specify a cheap type to include everyone or an expensive type to give the kids the best. Cheers Anne |
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