For many of us, August is back-to-school time. While we are busy buying for our own kids and getting them ready, their teachers are buying for dozens of students. It can be tough for parents, especially parents of multiple school-age kids to help out in the classroom or even to help out by purchasing items for the classroom. But it really isn’t that expensive or time-consuming to pick up a few of the things once or twice a school year to help out our children’s teachers.
When there are budget cuts some of the first items to go are what schools consider “extras” in the classroom. This includes:
Clorox or Sanitizing wipes
Many parents see these items on the list at the beginning of the school year. We don’t really think that they are all that important. We buy pencils, paper, and erasers for our child. Each of these is often lost within the first few weeks of school. But we do not usually buy more. Mainly because we don’t stop to think how often a child will lose these items or the fact that they will not come to us when they do lose them. They will go to their teacher. Their teacher will dig into their own supplies and share. But think about this happening with how many students your child has in one class. Most public school classes range from 32-40 students. This adds up, very quickly.
Purchasing a few extra boxes of pencils, paper, and erasers is simple. You can even buy them at bulk stores and get a lot of them for very little money. You could even go to dollar stores and buy many for very little money.
The big thing parents don’t realize helps so much in the classroom is hand sanitizer, cleaning wipes, and tissues. Schools are germ factories. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that the CDC doesn’t actually need offices they should just sit in a classroom and bring some petrie dishes with them. That being said, our kids learn better when they are in class. They will be in class more often if they do not get sick so often. Having a clean classroom and practicing safe and healthy habits in class like using tissues and washing their hands contributes to their own health, the health of others, and even allows everyone to have more learning time and less down time!
Tissues, sanitizer, and clean wipes are often not very expensive at all. They come in many different styles, types, and sizes. It’s easy to buy them, and it gives a HUGE piece of mind.
DID YOU KNOW:
Parents can also help collect box tops from their favorites food items at home and donate them to their child’s teacher. Box tops are often collected by schools and certain companies will donate money or supplies to schools for them. It requires little-to-no effort. Simply collect them at home and send them to school.
We hope that everyone has a great back-to-school time, and we hope very few germs head back home!