NPR. A new academic year is underway, and with that comes the hallowed ritual of buying school supplies.

These days that can mean not just pencils and notebooks for one student, but

also cleaning supplies and bulk quantities of stuff to be shared in a classroom. So in the spirit

of back-to-school season, we asked parents to tell us what was on their kids' school supply list,

and then we composed a little montage of it. This is the supply list for my kindergartner this year.

For my seventh grader.

My 10-year-old and the 15-year-old.

A three-ring binder.

One lunchbox with a handle for easy carrying.

Two composition notebooks that were seven and a half by nine and three-quarters inch.

One backpack, regular size.

Five boxes of crayons, pencils, whiteboard markers, glue sticks, scissors, and so on.

Two containers of wet ones.

Hand soap.

All this really takes me back to my elementary school days.

But two boxes of wet ones?

I mean, in my day, we just went through

the rest of the day sticky. You know what I mean? That's how you build resilience and children

just make them sit in their mess. Now, if you're thinking all of this stuff, wet ones included,

must really add up, you get a gold star. Total cost was approximately $50. This year I still spent about $70 or so on supplies.

We spent about $100 on all of this. The National Retail Federation says families are budgeting $144 on

average this year for school supplies. Teachers also spend hundreds of dollars every year on classroom essentials

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