3 Cool Activities Kids Can Use to Personalize Their School Supplies

Even as an adult, I love shopping for school supplies with my 5- and 7-year-olds and helping them get everything ready for a new year. This year, my 7-year-old is all about expressing her unique identity at school: It’s so important to her to have a lunch bag and a backpack that she feels represents who she is and look “cool” to all of her friends. And she’s been on a mission to decorate her backpack with keychains and pins to show off her many interests.

If there’s one thing my daughter loves even more than fun accessories, it’s getting the chance to make those accessories herself. So, when my editors at Scholastic offered me the chance to try out fun Klutz activity kits for customizing her gear, I jumped at the chance. Along with her 5-year-old brother, we spent the final weeks of summer break making backpack charms, designing our own stickers for folders and binders, and even crafting adorable custom erasers, and we’ve had so much fun together! These activities also gave us opportunities to talk through their back-to-school hopes, and my kids now are truly looking forward to starting a new year. Here’s a breakdown of these three back-to-school activities.  

Adorable Mini Erasers

One of my favorite things about Klutz crafts is that they always have unique concepts, and the Klutz: Make Your Own Mini Erasers kit is no exception. This one lets kids use clay to craft unique erasers that actually work, and the designs are are honestly adorable. 

This one does require a little bit of oven time, so it’s a tad more involved than the others, but it makes up for it by being ridiculously fun. It comes with eight different colors of clay, a sculpting tool, a pencil for shaping your creations, paper decorations, and an easy-to-understand book with designs and tips for sculpting and baking the clay. I used the supplies to make a teeny-tiny plate of eraser pancakes and a hamburger, while my kids crafted gnomes, crowns, birds, a cactus, and so many other cute designs. When they were done, we just had to pop them in the oven for about 20 minutes, and then let them cool.

All of the erasers we made were ideas from the included booklet, which breaks down how to make each one into simple steps. I loved the way this eraser project helped both of my kids work on their fine motor skills and challenged them to be creative. This kit would have been fun even if it involved just crafting little clay figurines, but the fact that they’re erasers that actually work and that my kids are excited to carry around in their pencil bags makes it even better.

(Kids who love playing with clay will also adore this Mini Bake Shop kit — just think cute donuts and cakes!)

Like most children, my kids absolutely love stickers! The Klutz: Make Your Own Puffy Stickers kit helps channel that love into an engaging activity. This kit comes with everything kids need to make 60 puffy stickers — basically, stickers with a puffy foam center that helps them bubble up instead of lying flat — including both pre-printed designs and several sheets of blank illustrations that they can color in and decorate themselves. It also includes a small sticker press for adding the “puffy” layer to the stickers, which is super easy to use.  

This kit is probably the most suitable for young children out of all the crafts we tried. After only one demonstration from me, my 5-year-old was able to use the press entirely on his own, which made him feel very grown-up and independent. Even though it’s a pretty easy craft, my 7-year-old still found it engaging because she had total control over her design process, and she got really into coloring her stickers.

My second grader loves crafting, but she also loves being able to share her favorite crafts and toys with her best friends. Luckily, the Klutz: BFF Backpack Charms kit was made for her to do just that. It comes with several plastic charms that kids can fill in with embroidery floss and then attach to their backpacks using the provided keyrings, or they can take them to school to give away to friends.

The kit involves using real needles to thread the floss through the provided plastic charms in a cross stitch fashion to make decorations that look like donuts, foxes, emojis, and best friend hearts. I just so happen to be an avid cross stitcher, so my oldest loved that she was getting the chance to do “crafts like mommy” when she worked on these.

The guide book that comes along with it has full-color illustrations and step-by-step instructions for each pattern, and the kit comes with enough supplies to make six different, full-size charms with sturdy keychain hangers. The quality of the supplies is also excellent, which makes it that much easier for kids to get the hang of it. It’s a good idea for parents to stick around to help tie knots and to show kids how to be safe with the needles, but if you’ve got a child who loves trinkets, being creative, and making things for other people, this kit checks off all of those boxes.

One of the most important aspects of school prep is getting kids excited about heading back to class. Even though we used these kits as fun crafts, they played a big role in getting us talking about school and in helping my kids feel anticipation about the start of a new year. Plus, it gave us the opportunity to spend some extra quality time together before they head back. My kids can’t wait to bring their personalized gear with them on their first day, and as a parent, I think that extra eagerness for school is one of the best things you can ask for from an activity.