Ever Growing Back-to-School Supplies

While students are heading back to school over these next few weeks, most parents of school-age kids have been preparing since at least the beginning of August. 

Although the circulars start advertising back-to-school sales just after Fourth of July, once the school mails the list of school supplies to send on the first day along with their child, those circulars can no longer be ignored.  Many parents feel like the list of supplies gets longer, and the backpacks heavier, each year.

To test this hypothesis, the Patch asked some area parents to weigh their child’s backpack once the supplies have been purchased and the pack filled for the first day of school.  

Erik Sikora was our kindergarten representative and his backpack weighed in at 8 pounds, which was filled with composition books, markers, glue, a few different kinds of tape, a pillowcase, and a hefty pack of printer paper. 

The third grader we asked, Annie Petersen, had a backpack that weighed 5 pounds.  The items in her bag were numerous, but not quite as heavy.  Examples included a pencil case with pens and pencils, glue sticks, a book cover, small composition books, and paper folders. 

Annie’s brother, Tommy, who is heading to fifth grade, had 5 pounds of stuff in his backpack. It contained similar items to Annie’s, but included some three-ring binders. 

Finally, off to 8th grade, Carter Tipton’s backpack tipped the scales at 7 pounds and included spiral notebooks filled with loose leaf paper, a protractor and compass, the requisite pens and pencils, a graphing calculator, three-hole punch, and a dictionary.

Thus, it appears that with the exception of the kindergarten year, the backpacks do get heavier, and the lists longer.