Starting Primary School Shopping List

[mummydummyabc]

Hoping to get some advice for how to get ready for starting Primary school. I know what I need to buy in terms of uniform, but what else do I need? Do they need stationary at this age? Is a book bag essential? Do they need anything else?

Our school said:

• book bag (can be bought from school office)
• bag with change of clothes that can be left at school, as realistically reception children are messy little creatures

Schools usually provide all stationery at this age.

If it’s a school that sets homework I suppose you could set up a pencilcase to use at home, ours doesn’t set any homework at reception so not sure about that.

Book bag the school usually sell them.
Draw string bag for pe kit.
Remember to label every piece of clothing, I’ve always just used a sharpie pen.
My dcs school doesn’t allow own pencil cases, they provide all stationary.

A distinctive PE bag that they can recognise in the PE bag chaos and that doesn’t have drawstrings that are three metres long for them to fall over when they are walking along. And put their name on it.

We were told to get waterproof trousers and jacket for forest school, but not sure if you need them

Your school will have told you what you need. No point asking on here because every school is different when it comes to book bags etc. Generally just uniform and PE kit. Lunch box and bottle if having packed lunch.

Yes please label EVERYTHING!!

Laundry pens are cheap in supermarkets ,no need to stitch labels in. If we have a hot spell in September you might want to buy a roll on stick sunblock and hat.

We've got uniform and pe kits

Book bag
Waterproofs and wellies for forest school
Hair Bobbles and bows

Book bag, PE bag, water bottle and name stickers. They all stuck key ring type things on the school book bag handles to personalise them when my eldest was in Reception, so something like that is useful if they all have the same school book bags. Packed lunch box/bag if they’re not going to be staying for school dinners.

School should have spare clothing if they ever have any accidents so I never bothered with sending in anything extra as it just seems to be more things to get lost!

Most don’t need stationery in Reception (though mine have loads at home for fun!). I think schools prefer book bags to rucksacks as they take up less space in trays or on hooks. They definitely need a bag of some kind as they will be bringing home reading books plus pictures and bits of work they’ve been doing. A decent, non-leaky water bottle is a good buy and the same goes for a snack pot for fruit/veg. Good luck!

We’ve been asked to use tote bags (the kind of flat canvas bags you use for shopping) rather than rucksacks as they fit better.

Yes to labelling everything.

Just whatever the school tells you. At ours they all need a water bottle, and most will put a keyring or ribbon on the bookbag to make it distinguishable from others. No stationery.

Vinyl stick-on name labels will come in useful time and time again, for water bottles, shoes etc. Lots are dishwasher-proof. It is really helpful if you can label clothes on the back of the neck, not just on the label hidden on the side seam.

School provided our first water bottle and book bag but we had to provide a spare bag of uniform.

School should tell you. Generally they will provide pencils and stationery in school (but you'll probably need some at home for the random homework tasks that come home later in the year).
PE kit - check when they start getting them changed for PE - ours don't do that with Reception till the spring as you can imagine the chaos.
Water bottle - some schools are stricter with only allowing transparent ones (to check for juice) than other schools.
Sun hat - depending on what the September weather's like.
Book bag/reading folder - school usually sell these. Some schools do/don't allow backpacks depending on their storage space so you'll need to find out the particular school view on that.
About 9 million pairs of gloves as they're a bastard for not coming home in pairs!
Most schools seem to ask for a pair of wellies for Reception kids - but tend to leave that a couple of weeks into term before using them - and some schools use them more than others (I think DD1 used hers once... then we moved schools and they come home absolutely mud covered as this one has the kids up the woods and everything)