Ben Morgenstern, 10, left, and his brother, Henry, 5, try on new messenger bags during a shopping trip for school supplies at SuperTarget, 3201 S. Iowa, with their mother, Janet Morgenstern, Baldwin City. Henry will be in kindergarten, and Ben will be in fifth grade this year.

Brenda van den Berg knew things were going to be different when her husband came home with a T-shirt for her middle child that read, “Nice thing about going back to school is new clothes.”

Preparing to move to Lawrence from the family’s native country of the Netherlands, her husband brought the shirt back from a trip to Kansas in August.

“We get new clothes when we need them, not when we go to school or something,” van den Berg says. “But it’s a habit over here, I think. When you go to school you have new clothes.”

By October of that year, the whole family was standing in the store for another ritual of back-to-school shopping: the school supplies list. That also wasn’t something they had to do in their native country.

“You have to bring markers and pencils,” says daughter Isabelle, 10, of school in the Netherlands. “They have colored pencils that you don’t have to have yourself.”

As the school year approaches – it begins Aug. 13 for most Lawrence Public Schools students – things are a bit easier this time around for van den Berg and her children, Isabelle, Carine, 8, and Carsten, 7. The mother took the kids to SuperTarget, 3201 S. Iowa, last week, with list in hand, ready to buy the necessary items.

Standing in that designated area, in the seasonal room at the store, van den Berg is having a much easier time going through the items she needs for a second-grader, fourth-grader and fifth-grader.

That’s the hope of Matt Branson, a manager at SuperTarget.

“We have a very focused back-to-school strategy where we try to lump all that stuff together into one place where it’s easy to find,” he says. “And we try to give a lot of signing to show value to our guests as well.”

Pricey preparation

Value is a big deal this year, with worries about gasoline, food and the economy, on top of the matter of getting school supplies.

A study by Deloitte LLP said 71 percent of respondents planned to spend less on back-to-school items this year.

Julie Urban estimated that buying school supplies for her two children, Ben, 7, and Grace, 5, would cost close to $100.

“It’s a lot more money than you think it is,” says Urban. “About halfway through the year you get these notes, ‘You need new this and this …'”

Trying to plan for those additional expenses during the school year isn’t helped by the fact the children’s favorite movies and cartoon characters make their mark on maybe less vital school supplies.

“Camp Rock,” Urban says when asked what her kids are looking for in back-to-school items. “We try to stay away from all that stuff, but she’s so excited and so is he. They think they get a new backpack every year, too, but … no.”

Almost on cue, Ben walks up to his mom with a “Camp Rock” movie backpack featuring the band the Jonas Brothers.

“Mom, it’s just $13,” he says, holding it up.

Branson says that, indeed, “Camp Rock” and other Disney products have been enticing to kids this year.

“A lot of our licensed stuff like Jonas Brothers stuff and also some of our Hannah Montana stuff is going really well,” Branson says. “A lot of those fashion-forward items in clothing for back-to-school has been really popular.”

Van den Berg’s children haven’t been begging for “Camp Rock” gear just yet, and even if they were, she wouldn’t mind – anything is easier than getting their supplies last year, or getting to school, in fact.

Last year, after wandering the aisles trying to find everything required – crayons, pens, pencils, markers, folders, water colors, erasers, glue, the list goes on and on – the kids showed up to school, only to be turned away, supplies and all.

“The first day they wanted to go to school, they had to get the immunizations and nobody told us before,” van den Berg says. “We had to go home with all of our school supplies. The second day, they got into the schools.”