It’s already that time of year, the time where we say goodbye to summer holidays and welcome a new school year. This year marks the year two of my kids will be going to school full-time, which means I’ll be doing double duty lunches and homework. Time to get organized.
Hopefully your kids are excited to be embarking on this new school year and anxious to get back to school and see all their friends and find out who this year’s teacher will be.
Some of us have children who are dreading the back to school grind, either enjoying summer break too much or terrified and anxious to be heading off to big kid school. Either way, there’s lots of preparing to do and lots that they can help with.

Kids can help label school supplies, lunch containers and water bottles, pack their school bags, try on clothes and shoes and organize the homework station.
You can organize a calendar together marking off the PD days and holidays of the year. This is a great tool to help them visualize the days they get to stay home and gives them somewhere to look when they’re aching for a break in the school year.
You can create a daily schedule for them to refer to, highlighting what time they will wake up, eat breakfast and be at the bus stop for, as well as end of day routines. Include homework time, play time and preparing for the following day.
Work together to come up with a list of snacks and lunches they like and are willing to try. If this is a stressor for you it’s a great idea to have some go to ideas. Often, if they’ve helped come up with the ideas they’ll be more apt to eat what you pack, after all they were the ones that got to choose. You can write out the list and post it in the kitchen for easy viewing.
During the summer months, routine and bedtimes are thrown out the door. In preparation for the early mornings, start reintroducing regular bed times the last week before school starts. With earlier bedtimes come wake up calls. Start rousing them out of bed around the time they’ll have to wake up for school.
One last hoorah. It’s not over yet. It’s a nice idea to have one last activity or event to bring them to or participate in before school does in fact start. For us, we always look forward to Shawville Fair. After just a few days of school they get to enjoy rides, entertainment and so much more at our local fair. It’s the one thing that has us super excited about back to school.
The start of school often also means the start of extracurricular activities. What, if anything, will your child be doing this year after school? Time to get thinking about what fits your agenda and works for the family.
Have a discussion with kids about what activities they want to try. Sometimes it may surprise you to know they don’t want to do anything extra (that was definitely the case with me as a child). If they love extra-curriculars maybe make a list in order of preference to narrow it down. Check out schedules and registration nights as they’ll be coming up soon in the fall.
Homework station — Have an area set aside with some basic supplies that will be needed for homework duty. In our house this includes notebooks, paper, pencils, sharpener, eraser and crayons. It could also include a calculator, math manipulatives, glue, scissors and so on.
Enjoy these last few days before the routine of school starts back up, I know I will!