Back to school is always my favorite time of year. I find September feels more like a new year than does January. Everything is fresh: the start of autumn, new school clothes, new routines and activities. In France this is called la rentrée and it dominates french life right now, including all the ads and store windows. It seems as if everything is leading up to the Parisians returning from summer holidays and children and adults alike getting back to their routines.

In July we received an email from the girls’ new school with the list of supplies they would need to bring on the first day. At our local school in Calgary we do not bring any school supplies, not even a pencil, so this was a big change. Each girls’ list was three printed pages long and was incredibly specific. For example, one of Sophia’s items was “2 large (24cm x 32cm) exercise books with one page with squares and the facing page blank. Each to be covered with transparent plastic covers.”  Mavis requires “1 small exercise book (17cm x 22cm) with SEYES (squares on all pages), 100 pages, without spiral and 1 plastic cover for the above book in yellow.”

For each textbook or notebook, it specifies to be covered in plastic and for each one it gives us the color to use. They need two pencils, not three or some pencils, but two pencils. Not surprisingly, since all children have identical supplies, all items must be labeled with their names.

We were given the advice to drop the list off at a recommended bookshop and ask them to collect the supplies. Two days later we went back to pick them up.  Four large, heavy shopping bags later, labeled with the girls’ names, we headed for home. Thankfully, we planned ahead and brought backpacks to help carry everything. Even with the four of us it was heavy work.

The girls immediately unpacked their things and tried to match the items with the list. They made piles. They organized. They wanted to be ready when the teacher told them in French to get out their grand cahier à dessins sans spiral. 

We are not the only ones getting our school supplies. We were in BHV recently, our favorite department store that stocks everything from hardware and kitchen supplies to clothes and has an amazing selection of art supplies, and it was crawling with people walking around with their lists. Kids were choosing backpacks and pencil cases and you could see parents’ eyes going from the shelves to the lists and back again. Clearly they were trying to figure out if the notebook they were looking at had the appropriate number of pages or squares and how they could find that same book in orange instead of blue. Looking around I was very thankful we had gone the local bookshop route. 

That being said, I understand that in the first week of school we will be given more items that need to be purchased. Perhaps we will take that list to the store ourselves and try to find the items. Perhaps. Or perhaps not.