4 Things to Help You When Your Kids Go Back to School

Clothes are on sale. Backpacks, lunch boxes, binders, and paper are on sale. You know what that means!! BACK TO SCHOOL time is almost here. There is both sadness and happiness.

Which side are you on? Or are you like me and in the middle? There are pros and cons to school beginning this time of year. To help get you ready I have 4 things to do to kick start this time.

Morning Routines

Mornings can get pretty hectic with having to get children ready for school on time. We have been doing our daily lists that past two summers. I am going to be doing a modified daily list for the mornings.

If there is a set number of things to do each morning then hopefully you can get into a good routine that will help your mornings start off right. This will help going back to school a bit easier.

Here is the list of things I will expect my children to do every morning, but need to realistic that it may not happen all the time…

• Make bed
• Get dressed
• Brush teeth
• Clean room (clothes away, floor picked up)
• Cleaning sticks (at least one, maybe two)
• Pack lunch if needed

Doing these 5-6 things should only take 15-20 minutes. If they are up before me it will give them something to do to be productive. I love the idea of getting my kids into the habit of doing a few simple things in the morning to start their day off well.

I’m still thinking on how we will do cleaning sticks once school starts. There may be a modified cleaning sticks during the school year for the mornings. Then we may have one day after school where we spend 30 minutes to clean the kitchen and bathrooms.

Easy Lunches

I’m not going to lie that my son loves and would prefer school lunch. We started off letting him have school lunch once a week. Then it turned into two days. It ended up with school lunch on the days Eddy worked (2-3 times a week).

School lunch is easy because I don’t have to do anything but have money in his account. It makes our morning easier with less complaining.

If you are going to do school lunch everyday then this is super easy for you. For those that are planning to do part school, part home lunch or fully home lunch I have some tips to help you.

• To save money buy a good reusable water bottle that you can fill with water, juice, or milk.
• Get a reusable lunch box that your child can easily open, close, and get things in and out.
• Buy cheap or used spoons and forks that your child can use in their lunch AND that you don’t mind if they don’t come back.
• Label your child’s lunch box and water bottle.
• Have some school lunch items that are just for days they take their lunch to school.
• Pre-make PB and jam sandwiches and freeze. Make sure you put peanut butter on both sides of the bread so the jam doesn’t make the bread soggy.
• Have a tub of school lunch items your child can grab and put in their lunches. This includes fresh fruit and veggies all ready in the fridge.
• Set up an expectation of when and who gets lunch ready.
• Set up an expectation of what goes in school lunch.

Questions to Ask Your Child

I really love talking. It’s so much fun to talk about our day. Sometimes my son doesn’t want to talk at all about his day while he was at school. Anyone else with me?

There are just times when our children don’t want to share about their day. I don’t want to be annoying with my son and keep asking him. It is also important that he can come to me and feel comfortable to talk about anything he wants to.

As a parent it can be hard to get to the point. I am not there yet, still working on it. To help get me there I have a few questions that I ask my son when he’s ready to talk.

When he’s ready to talk!

That’s the important part. As a parent you will learn when your child is ready or not ready to talk. Here are some questions that might help open up that communication about what happened at school.

• Did you feel safe?
• What was something that happened that was funny (boring, exciting, sad, weird, etc.)?
• What did you do that was nice?
• Did you do anything that wasn’t nice?
• Did anyone make you feel happy (insert any emotion)?
• Who did you play with at recess?
• What did you read? Tell me about it.
• What was your favorite part?
• What was your least favorite part?
• Is there anything else you want to talk about or tell me?

I suggest picking a few questions to ask. You don’t want to bombard them with tons of questions.

We have gotten into the habit of talking about what the girls and I did while my son was at school. You can’t expect them to open up if you do not show them the way and be an example.

Pre/Post School Signs

Darling pictures are all over Facebook and Instagram that show their cute kids holding signs about the beginning of school. I don’t have a darling sign but I did make signs. 🙂

What I love about the signs I made was it tells a lot about my kiddo at that time in their lives. I did the same questions for the beginning and end of the year.

I love you guys so I have a free printable for you from kinder-6th grade. The questions are the same each year because I wanted to see how their answers changed or stayed the same over the long haul.

As the last few weeks of summer go by too quickly I hope you get to spend as much of that time playing with your kiddos. And happy getting ready for back to school.

Xoxo, Steph