Our school specifies standard size and not jr. for kindergarten. It looks big on them but with lunchboxes, folders, and a sweatshirt or so, it still fills up. We like Lands End backpacks.

DS had the LL Bean jr one in pre-school. At some point I'd bought a regular sized Lands End one on sale... and he moved to that one within about a week of starting K. the jr one was too small for K.

Similarly here, we got the LL Bean Original backpack (they call it book pack for some reason) last year for my then-rising kindergartner after reading posts here. She is petite, and it did look huge on her, but something smaller would not have worked. We got the matching lunch bag, too.

I got one from Lands End. It was the next size up from the small one. It has one large compartment and 2(?) smalls ones. It has lasted 2 yrs. and is still in great shape. DS is hard on everything! He's also tall, so that's why we choose to go with the size that we did.

Anonymous wrote:I’m a big fan of the backpacks from Lands End because they have a feature that many do not: a chest clip in the front. I feel like that really helps little kids keep the weight distributed evenly.

PB has the chest clip, too, and for my 40th percentile kid mentioned above with the large one, she definitely used the chest clip every time.

Through 1st we were able to use the Jr sized bags from Garnet Hill / Lands End / LL Bean.

We have had lunch bags from all of the above as well and they all last the same.

The full sized are too big.

Anonymous wrote:We got the big PB one for my K after reading many posts here. It was huge but looked adorable. She is about 40th percentile for height and weight. It will last her for years.

Also, there were times I felt like her backpack was full. We kept a change of clothes in there all year. Library books were sometimes the very large picture books which would not have fit in the small. She had a PB lunchbox, which is pretty large, etc. So glad we got the bigger one and multiple classmates' parents told me they wished they had, too.

Anonymous wrote:We got the regular sized one from Pottery Barn. It fit his folders, lunch box and snack bag plus various things we would send in. We can use it next year as well since it held up well, so it was worth it.

Meant to say size large from Pottery Barn Kids.

I’m a big fan of the backpacks from Lands End because they have a feature that many do not: a chest clip in the front. I feel like that really helps little kids keep the weight distributed evenly.

Get a standard one- you do need to make sure it holds that stuff. Plus, rain boots or extra clothing or whatever. If you think you won't use it for more than a year, you can get smaller one:

https://www.landsend.com/products/classmate-small-backpack/id_324520?sku_0=::1U9

But imo, I'd get the medium/ regular size and it will last ages.

https://www.landsend.com/products/classmate-medium-backpack/id_324522?sku_0=::YGJ

(I love the lands end ones, but any of the high quality backpacks will do)

We got the big PB one for my K after reading many posts here. It was huge but looked adorable. She is about 40th percentile for height and weight. It will last her for years.

It's very convenient if it has a mesh pocket on the outside to hold a water bottle.

We got the regular sized one from Pottery Barn. It fit his folders, lunch box and snack bag plus various things we would send in. We can use it next year as well since it held up well, so it was worth it.

We got the smaller one from Pottery Barn. It was fine for K, but we'll be upgrading this fall for 1st. We had to make sure ours for K held a folder, that was about it.

Any recommendations on kindergarten backpacks? The standard backpacks seem enormous! The school paperwork says it must fit a 9 x 11 folder, and lunch... Is that all we need?

This is our one "back to school" shopping item and I was going to make a big deal to get DD excited for school.