All children love summer vacation, and the thought of going back to school can weigh heavily on their attitude in the last few weeks of break. If you don't accurately get your child ready to go back to school, you can have major issues during the first week—and especially during the first day.
Children are no longer in the school routine, and it's important to get them back on a schedule before the first day turns into a frenzy. In order to keep everyone calm during that first week back to school, the following are tips to help get you prepared.
1. Be ready for registration.
Some schools require a great deal of paperwork in order to register your child for school. This can include birth certificates, proof of residency and medical clearance, to name a few. The minute you receive information on what you'll need for registration, you need to compile it all together and place it somewhere safe. This way, on the day of registration, you're not scrambling to find out where everything is.
2. Be prepared for the first day.
The night before the first day of school, make sure that your children have their outfits already picked out and that everything they need to bring is packed into their bags. Make lunches the night before and keep them in the fridge, and you may even want to set the breakfast table and know what's for breakfast before you go to bed. This way, come morning, it won't be a scramble trying to get everything ready.
3. Set schedules.
If you have multiple children in your home and only one bathroom, you need to set schedules for bathroom use. Depending on what needs to be done, give each child 15 or 30 minutes of bathroom time for themselves. When time is over, they need to get out and move on.
4. Start waking up for school a week early.
If your child slept in all summer, you can't expect to wake them up at dusk on the first day of school and expect them not to be tired. Your child's sleep schedule is not the same during the summer as it is for school, and you need to get them ready. The week before school starts, have your children go to bed at their school bedtime and wake them up as if they were going to school. By doing this for one week, you will get your child used to the hours, allowing them to get back on the school sleep schedule.
5. Practice.
The day before school starts, do a practice run of how things are going to go in the morning. Wake children up at the normal time and have them act as if they were going to school. Make them eat breakfast, get ready and get all of their stuff together, and then either drive or walk to school or the bus stop. This way, both you and your children know if you have enough time for everything or if you need to make some adjustments. It's better to know this ahead of time than to find out on the first day of school. This is also a good way to show your children where the bus stop is or the route you will take to school if you drive or walk.
6. Create a schedule.
The school year is chock full of activities, functions, menus and their own calendars, and all of this information is always sent home on a separate piece of paper. In order to stay organized, you need to create one calendar for all of your plans. Use a different color for each child to help make it more organized, and include everything on the calendar. This way, your family will know where to find all of the necessary information, and you won't forget something important along the way.
Don't let sending your children back to school become a chaotic experience for you. Instead, use these tips to help make the transition from summer to school more enjoyable.
About The Author:
Anne Gray is a college student and avid reader. She likes to blog about schooling tips and writes book reviews in her spare time. Anne recently wrote a review on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which she had read for her college literature class.
