School Supply Shopping with a Preschooler - Craft Parenting Podcast & Blog

Written by: Caroline Ludwig

When you’re pregnant you get lots of unsolicited advice and warnings of what the next few months have in store. They warn you of morning sickness and some home cures, swelling, and growing of things you didn’t think would swell or grow, and all of the things to watch out for with a newborn. No one talks about the perils of school supply shopping, and I feel like the fact that no one is talking about it is misleading to parents of young kids.

As a child, you love picking out new school supplies. The joy of new characters and ways to express yourself to your peers, fresh coloring tools, and some new outfits to show off on the playground. As an adult, you’re navigating your favorite store aisles while panicking trying to find everything on the school supply list. Attempting to find things in order on the list so you don’t forget anything, but also trying to get through the store as quickly as possible.

Our lives are a bit crazy at the moment. I’m in two different weddings before the end of the year, one of which all but the dogs in our household are a part of. Trying to find a Flower Girl Dress for Lilly, making room on our schedule for all of the associated parties, plan Lilly’s third birthday, and potty training for preschool have taken over my mind the last few weeks. I’ve been a little more flustered than usual, but Lilly has been making decent progress with potty training. Recording a podcast episode about it certainly helped, as did buying some rubber pants to put over her underwear to keep our house semi-clean.

In an attempt to slightly calm down the things that have been racing through my mind I decided it was time to go school supply shopping. It may be early, but we have the school supply list so I figured there was no time like the present, and having a cool backpack and new supplies would be great motivation for potty training. Lilly and I started off with a quick trip to Java Jackets, one of our favorite coffee spots, to get some caffeine and hopefully sanity. Lilly enjoyed her hot coco and I checked off the last spot on their drink passport so look for me on their ‘Wall of Fame’ soon!

Despite all of the stalling, it was time to head to the store and I decided to go with Target so we could get some new shoes and clothes as well. Lilly is starting to grow out of her shoes and needed a few smart outfits that were preschool worthy. The trip started calm enough and Lilly picked out a new pair of shoes and a new pair of boots that are both super cute. We then picked out two new outfits (a slight impulse buy) to mix up her outfit choices. It was then time to head to the school supply section, it’s been up for a while so I hoped there would still be plenty of things to pick from.

As we approached the school supply aisles the store was getting more crowded, obviously, Target was the place to be on a random Sunday. We started with the backpacks since that would be where Lilly would have the most say in what she could get. The only requirements were ‘full size’ and ‘no wheels’ so there was a lot to choose from. Lilly was torn between a princess backpack and a unicorn backpack but ultimately decided to go with the unicorn since it had a sequin color-changing pouch. A pencil case, crayons, watercolor paints, and dry erase markers were easy to come by and were quickly thrown into the cart. Then things started to get harder to find. We specifically needed a red and blue folder so we waded through the notebooks to find the folders. Meanwhile, Lilly was trying to throw everything under the sun into the cart: notebooks, calculators, and mechanical pencils. If she didn’t need it, she was trying to put it in the cart. I was glad she was trying to help and attempted to point her in the direction of things we did need. While Lilly was looking at a slap bracelet style ruler I was looking at what was left on our list: playdough, pencils, yellow highlighters, markers, headphones, and generic classroom community supplies. Most things called out a specific brand or requirements that were hard to come by so it was time to leave the school supply section and head to the general aisles. By this point, Lilly was happy to sit in the cart and look through all of her supplies which expedited things a bit.

After cruising through the paper product aisles to get paper towels and tissues, it was time to hit up office supplies and again the aisles got crowded. There we found a few holdouts: highlighters, the specific brand of pencil the list asked for, and markers. We still didn’t have playdough or headphones but it was time to head home, both Lilly and myself were getting tired and frustrated so it was time for some lunch and a nap.

Lilly helped me load all of our wares onto the conveyor including an unnecessary calculator (I handed that to the cashier to get shelved later). Lilly didn’t want to hand over the backpack but I assured her she would get it right back. I balked at the price of all of the things we were buying but knew our little angel was worth it. As I put the bags into the cart with Lilly she unzipped the backpack and started transferring the supplies into her new backpack. Our little girl is so excited to go to preschool that I’m excited to see her growth over the next year.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized how stressed I was over the whole experience when I felt like a huge weight was off of my shoulders. The list given was specific about some items but very vague on others leaving me confused. I am not quite sure what size of things I was supposed to buy so I might have overbought, but I guess that just means more supplies for next year. There were also things I wasn’t able to find: a four-pack of playdough, headphones with an audio jack, and maybe something else, but my brain has melted so I’ll worry about it closer to the start of school.

For now, I’m going to open a bottle of wine and not start crying over how big our little baby is getting. Maybe I’ll buy a few bottles of wine as I pick up the missing school supplies to make sure we can make it through the year.

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