It wouldn't be the end of the school year without 97 different end-of-the-year projects to go with it! I've compiled a handy little shopping list to help you get these last few weeks of the school year over the goal line. The first thing you're thinking is that this is a little late to be handing out this list.

Unfortunately, the life experience that came with this knowledge interfered with me actually being able to write it down until now. The second thing you're thinking is that you already know I'm the least crafty person on the planet, so how am I possibly qualified to generate an expert list like this one? I'm not. But, if I had had this list three months ago, I'd have a lot fewer gray hairs. The recommendations listed below are based on the needs of three children. Adjust accordingly.Tri-fold boards: Buy at least 100 of these. Buy them on Amazon, have them delivered in bulk, store them in the garage. Make sure the kids don't use them to construct a "fort." 100 is a conservative estimate. Regardless of how many times you tell your kid to lay out their entire project before they glue, they will immediately glue the largest thing crookedly and in the wrong place. According to my kids, these can't be reused EVER. A brief pictorial overview of the Civil War apparently loses something when it's covering up a diagram of the water cycle. Once you finish with the first project, be sure not to forget to order the next 100 boards. Plan to spend a little extra on the tip for the recycling truck, because they're the ones who have to haul these things away. Recycling is great because now your child's masterpiece can be chewed up into tiny bits (which it totally deserves) and probably made into more tri-fold boards, instead of spending eternity in a landfill.Glue sticks: Buy about 100. Take caps off 50 of them and let them dry out completely. Then, just for fun, mix those 50 in with the other 50 good ones.Crayons: Buy approximately 5 of the giant 64-piece crayon boxes. Take those crayons and dump them in a garbage bag. Smash those crayons. Dump the remnants in a bin and save that bin forever, no matter how many times you realize that the kids are never going to use those crayons. (If you're an expert crafter, you're probably saving them to make your own party favors with a cookie cutter and your oven.) Then, buy about 50 boxes of the simplest package of crayons you can find. I recommend the standard eight-pack. Hide these away where they can absolutely not be found by a kid. I don't care if you have to dig a hole in the backyard and bury them 8 feet down, buy a safe or hire a guard dog. These crayons must be protected and only doled out when absolutely needed. The children must never know about the other 49 boxes, or they will immediately pounce on them, reduce them to dust, and dump the remainders in the misfit crayon bin, and they will not have a single crayon when it comes time to execute a project.Markers: See glue sticks. Follow the same process.Glitter: Buy this by the pound, if possible. Trust me. Every single project your kid has to do will look way better with a thick coat of glitter. Also, teachers will run away screaming and want that thing out of their room as soon as possible, so they will probably just give your kid the benefit of the doubt as far as grading goes.Adhesive gems, doodads and letters: These things go together. Literally. At any given time, you will find a composite layer of them irredeemably stuck together at the bottom of the craft closet/drawer/bin. Don't ever expect these to actually make it onto a project, just buy them with good intentions and then forget about them until you have to peel them off the kitchen floor because someone thought it would be fun to practice spelling her name and adding sparkly highlights.Construction paper: Buy the big combo pack. When you get home from the store, divide it up by colors and give each child their favorite color. Never expect to see those sheets again. (Don't be sad, though, you will be reunited when they "surprise" you with all the confetti they made out of it.) Try to ignore the fact that one child just walked off with all the blue, making any future need for cutting out "water" moot. Ignore the green pack that just walked off, and forget about ever making "grass." When they need to make these things, have fun watching them try to explain why the grass is pink and the sky is yellow. Blame it on their "creative" side.Glue gun: This is the holy grail of school crafting projects. No more sending your kid out the door with wet Elmer's glue dripping from the project that you just spent half the night assembling, because they didn't tell you it was due tomorrow until bed time. Glue gun glue dries almost instantly, and that bond is for life. You will greatly appreciate this fact when the globs of hot, molten glue land on your fingers. Hot glue is especially awesome when you're trying to stick felt onto something. Hot glued felt sticks to skin in about 0.0001 nanoseconds. I know, I've timed it. Bonus: you can leave the felt that is now glued to your skin in place as a makeshift Band-Aid.If you haven't finished up all those end-of-the-year projects yet, good luck! For those of you who have, perhaps you want to save this list for next year. Might I suggest buying the glue gun first, so that you can attach this list to a prominent place for easy access? Like the refrigerator. Or your right elbow.Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.