School is back in session! From Highlighters to Notebooks, Upgrade Your Back-to-School Supplies List With These Updates To A Few Classics.

The first day of school can feel incredibly nerve-wracking and exciting, all at the same time. The year ahead screams of fresh possibilities and adventures to come. And there is nothing quite like cracking open a brand new textbook. 

As a parent, walking down the aisles of a retail store during this time of year is a ritual all its own. You’ve probably already stocked up on all of the essentials, from crayons to pencils to notebooks and more. 

This list doesn’t cover the basics. Instead, we’re talking about back-to-school supplies that will not only get your kids excited about the year ahead. Some of these supplies will even help them study better (yes, you read that right!). And in an era where so many aspects of school have gone electronic and/or virtual, they will help them keep up with the digital race. 

Add these back-to-school supplies to their need-to-have, want-to-have, and never even knew they wanted it list. 

Forget paper notebooks. Try reuseable notebooks.

There’s something about a fresh notebook that practically screams “it’s a new school year” in all the best ways. But there’s only one problem with all those notebooks. What do you do with all of them at the end of the year? Do you keep your notes? Stow away your boring pages of algebra exercises because you also used the margins to doodle your favorite Marvel characters? 

If you want to keep a record of your notebooks and avoid throwing stacks of notebooks in the recycle bin, a Rocketbook is the perfect solution. It looks and feels pretty close to a regular notebook, and you even use a pen to write in it. But here’s the thing: the notebooks are reuseable! You can convert everything you’ve written into a digital file with ease, then erase the pages using a wet cloth and start over. 

Want to stay better organized? You can even tell all those digital files where to go. Send your calculus notes to your Google Drive, your sketches and doodles to your email, and more, all with a click of a button on the Rocketbook app. 

Highlighter pens are pretty. But this scanning pen saves any highlighted text to your chosen digital device. 

You know the old drill. Late-night study sessions with textbooks sprawled out in front of you. You reviewed the study guide the teacher had given you, looking for the answer to a particular question. 

You were sure it was on page 69. Or was it on page 82? You were sure you highlighted it in bold, bright green. 

Well, with the Scanmarker Air, your kids no longer have to suffer through the torture of flipping through hundreds of pages trying to find a specific highlighted section. Its OCR technology allows you to use it just like a pen to highlight a text; only instead of adding neon color to your textbook, it makes a digital copy of that text and saves it to any connected device of your choice. 

College students will be huge fans of this one. While everyone might love a textbook to be full of beautiful colors, think of all the money you’ll save when it comes time to sell those books to the next student in need. 

Time to toss out those basic backpacks with cheap zippers. Upgrade to a waterproof day pack that’s packed with style and plenty of storage. 

Remember the old days, when you used to just cram everything you needed for the day into that one large main compartment of your backpack? You had to carefully choose which of the smaller things would get the precious space in that teeny-tiny front pocket. 

Your kids can enjoy a major upgrade. Backpacks these days have insides that offer all sorts of pockets and corners to store things. The North Face Day Pack is a great choice, not only for style but for design. It is waterproof, has plenty of pockets for electronic gizmos (including a laptop sleeve), and it has a spot for a water bottle on the outside as well. 

But don’t worry. For the traditionalists out there, it still has a rather large main compartment to shove all the random doo-dads and thingamabobs into if you want to go old-school style. 

Retro electronics have their place. But when it comes to getting schoolwork done, it’s time to get focused with noise-canceling earbuds. 

Headphones are on just about every school’s “must-have” list, especially with tablets becoming more common in classrooms across the country. Going old-school will not do your student any favors. Help them focus on the homework in front of them and less on the chaos around them with noise-canceling headphones that can block out the sounds of chattering students, recess bells, shuffling papers, and more. 

Of course, Airpods are an obvious favorite when it comes to noise-canceling earbuds. But there are other options on the market as well. 

Avoid hallway slips, accidents, and breakage with powerful gription. 

It’s almost a required scene in any high school movie -- someone, somewhere, somehow, is walking down the hallway, crashes into a fellow student, and their belongings topple all over the floor. 

It is a predictable scene in real life too. Between school buses and hallways crammed with students rushing to and fro to the next period, fewer students store their belongings in their lockers. And that means they are carrying more things in their arms. This means that those inevitable games of hallway bumper cars lead to belongings taking hard falls. 

But since school supplies now include many expensive electronic products, this can be a risky proposition. Cracked cell phone screens and broken tablets are something everyone wants to avoid. Make sure your student keeps a grip on all their back-to-school supplies, from laptops to calculators, with CatTongue Grips phone grips, tablet grips and Gription® Roll. 

And don’t forget, many CatTongue Grip products are anti-microbial. An added bonus, now, more than ever! 

Feel free to color outside the lines with erasable colored pencils. 

Colored pencils, you know. But erasable colored pencils? That’s something we’d call brilliant. Let your kids feel free to draw outside the lines, knowing they can erase their mistakes and try something new. But these aren’t just for your elementary school students. Even junior high and high school students will appreciate being able to doodle with these colored pencils as they listen to lectures on negative ions or Newton’s radiant prisms hypothesis. 

Lunch from home, carried to school in style. 

Don’t get us wrong. We love the traditional tin lunch boxes and vintage Playmates-style lunch boxes as much as the next person. But this Mazforce lunch box is a bestseller on Amazon for good reason. Not only does it offer superior insulation (always a plus for keeping food from spoiling), but it is easy to clean. Plus, kids and teenagers alike will love all the little cubby holes and pockets for storing everything from sauce packets to side dishes. And if black isn’t your color, don’t worry, there’s plenty of colors and patterns to choose from. 

Back-to-School Supplies That’ll Keep Kids Of All Grades Hooked On Learning

The school year has already started, but there’s still time to get organized and give their back-to-school supplies a seriously needed upgrade. And CatTongue Grips make a perfect accessory for just about everything on this list. 

How have your kiddos used CatTongue Grip products at school? Have they added a bit of grip tape to their pens and pencils? Added a cell phone grip to their favorite device?  

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