Amazon.com Back to School

Amazon.com Back to School includes a variety of offers. I'm going to give you the general links here then write about a few things, my picks, which I think are particularly worth checking out, and may not be so obvious, below that.

• Back to School Savings
  
• School Shopping By Grade
• Textbook Store
  

Many of the promotions make me cringe - they are suggesting new bedding, computers, scanners, and a whole host of expensive items which seem to me to have no connection to back-to-school. I do recognize that you mileage may vary. For all I know you may want to buy ahead for the holidays or you may be waiting for just the kind of deals they have. Anyway, here are my picks.

• Short-sleeved polo shirts - I wear polo shirts because they are inexpensive and comfortable.
• Prismacolor colored pencils - for colored pencil drawing it's worth having high quality pencils and Prismacolor make some of the nicest.
• Super magnet science kit - who can resist a set of cool magnets? Looks like fun to me!
• Set of 4 Tycoon games - great games for the 8-10 year old boy in particular. Tycoon games were popular in my home for quite a while.

Happy browsing. I'll have more links later on savings.
Purchases made through the above links support The Homeschooler's Guide to the Galaxy.

Animal School

Animal School - it's what happens to the wonderful, unique children in our lives all too often. I hope that as a reader of my blog you are already working to help your child thrive. A reminder is good for all of us though :-)

Staples Back to School

Staples back to school promotions include several items for Free this week. In my area there are discounts on laptops, monitors, graphing calculators, USB flash drives and scientific calculators. I'm not sure how much the offers vary from store to store.

Here is the Staples back to school ad for my local store: Staples Back to School. Since I'm pretty sure you don't live close to my store be sure to enter your own location to get the relevant ad.

Ten Reasons Parents Send Their Kids to School

Here are ten reasons that I think parents send their kids to school:

1. Both parents are working and there's no-one home to homeschool.
2. Parents want to be adults again and they can't wait for their kids to go off to school - they've not mastered the art of errands with kids in tow.
3. Kids need something more to do and parents think that it's school.
4. They don't know how to homeschool and don't think it's an option.
   
5. Kids need friends and parents think school is the best place to get them.
6. They think you need endless patience to homeschool.
7. School and teachers are thought to be the experts and will do a better job than they could.
8. Kids will do things for teachers that they would not do for their parents - they want someone else involved in disciplining their kids.
   
9. Everyone else is doing it.
10. It's a right of passage? They did it themselves so their kids must do it too.