I only recommend products I use myself and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

I finished our back to school shopping back in July (except for shoes, we got those last week). We reuse as many school items as we can (lunch bag, etc.) and then I shop the sales to try and get the majority of school supplies without spending a large amount of money. With the economy the way it is right now even the good deals aren't enough sometimes. Talking to a teacher last week I learned that some students at Little B's school came to school last year and didn't have a backpack or anything. That saddened my heart. I think that every child should have the tools they need for a good education. Elmer's feels the same way that I do which is why they offer the Elmer's Bag It Forward program.

Elmer's, through the Bag It Forward, encourages people while back to school shopping to purchase an extra backpack/school supplies for a child in need in their community. I was excited when I was chosen to be a part of Bag It Forward. Since I was all ready finished with school shopping I purchased 2 backpacks and took the list of supplies that Little B needed for 1st grade and we went shopping for a boy and a girl at Little B's school. My original plan was to donate the 2 backpacks to the Salvation Army since they had recently held a charity giveaway and handed out 50+ backpacks to children who needed them but since it was so close to the time for school they were no longer accepting donations so I contacted Little B's school and told them about Elmer's Bag It Forward and they were more than willing to accept our donated supplies.

I did the Bag It Forward school shopping at Walmart. I checked the sales ads for school supply deals to see if I could price match any supplies but it turns out that Walmart all ready had the best deals on everything we would need to buy this week. Plus I had some left over school supply coupons that I could use. With it being the week before school started and all the college kids back in town I wasn't sure how stocked Walmart would be on school supplies. I was surprised that they still had aisles and aisles of school supplies. I let the boys help choose the items for our donations. First we hit the backpacks. I knew I wanted to donate a backpack for a boy and a backpack for a girl. For the boy we chose a reflective Transformers bag and for the girl we chose a sparkly Hello Kitty bag.

Then we worked our way through the crowd to the supplies and we were quickly able to get everything off the list. We got crayons, scissors, pencils, dry erase markers, folders, notebooks, erasers, and glue. The school requested lots and lots of glue. Each child is asked to bring in 12 all purpose school glue sticks and a bottle of school glue. That's a lot of glue for 1 kid but thanks to the large quantity of Elmer's glue in stock there was plenty to go around.

While getting all the things for our backpacks we also came across a Elmer's binder pouch that can hold pencils, glue sticks or  what not and it hooks into a binder. I didn't know Elmer's made those. Little B asked for one so he picked out a blue one to go in his binder. Once we had everything off the list plus a few odd and end things for my boys we hit the check out lines. Boy oh boy were they long but they wait wasn't as bad or nearly as long as I thought it was going to be. Our supply donations filled up the conveyer belt. I knew 2 children were going to be very happy with their goodies.

So now that you know about Bag It Forward how can you help? If you have a Facebook page then you can help without even leaving your chair. For every like that the Elmer's Facebook page can get by September 1, they will donate a product to the Foundation’s national network of free stores, where teachers from disadvantaged schools can “shop” for free for school supplies. If you want to go out and share the school supply wealth in your own community you can purchase extra supplies and give them to a child you know who could use them or donate them to a local charity. You can even show off your good deed by loading a photo of your donation to the Bag It Forward site. Oh and did y'all know that Elmer's is a Upromise partner and every time you purchase an Elmer's or Krazy Glue product with your registered drug or grocery card, a percentage of your purchase will be put into your Upromise account?

Since they aren't allowed to share names at school of those who were in need I left the backpacks with the school counselor and I was told that some children in one of the special needs classes would benefit from our Bag It Forward donations.

Have you supported Elmer's Bag It Forward before? To read more Bag It Forward stories you can follow #bagitforward on twitter.

disclaimer: This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Elmer's #BagItForward #collectivebias. All opinions in this post are that of Mama Bee Does and family.