Back-to-school rituals to navigate excitement, jitters, and anxiety and return to the school routine groove after the summer break.
The two-month summer break is now gone and it is time to go back to school. New school year, new class, friends, timetable, more matured, grown up to go through the academic year.
It is hard to believe that the last day of the summer holidays is here.
Children are ready or nearly ready for the new year.
My daughter could not stop talking about going back to see her friends after not seeing them over the break.
But first she has to get things ready for her first day back.
Back to school rituals
She put together a small backpack where a pencil case, a small notepad and a water bottle were neatly packed.
First day. Big day.
Those are the only three things that the school advised her to take on her first day, not the official day yet but to go for an induction session.
The idea is to ease them into the new school year, schedule, show them their room, meet the teacher and find out their schedule.
This is useful for her because she would not be shocked on her first official big day at senior school or year 7.
She has finished primary or junior school and she has been very excited to move up as she is so ready for it.
I have noticed that we have been doing them since she started school and we miss or add one or two occasionally but generally, these are common in our back-to-school rituals.
Here are a few things we do before starting a new school year:
Checklists of supplies and uniforms needed. The list of kits and uniforms would be online nowadays so, a day or two before school starts we check which are required and then go through the wardrobe to see which ones still fit.
Unless my daughter have massively grown taller her uniforms would fit for the first few weeks.
I knew I might be too easy with this but I do not want to go to the shops and hit busy times. That is the same thing for online shopping, the supplies might have been short on sizes so I wait a few weeks for them to get back on track and then I would do my shopping.
As for school supplies, we hunt for still good pencils, rubbers, rulers, scissors, notepads and go from there.
The school provides notebooks and books so we do not need to worry about those.
This year, we needed a new book bag because last school years have decided to crumble and had to retire.
New haircut.
We got back literally two days before school started this year and we had my daughter’s hair cut a week prior.
New haircut for the new school year.
I want to avoid a wonky haircut now.
I get the blame for giving her a funny hairdo so better to have it done by professionals and to let the hair grow a little before classes starts has become nice.
Talk or not talk about first day
Amon was always excited to go back to school since year 3. She would be the one to start the conversation about going back, seeing her friends and meeting the new teacher.
She would be out the door very early and I don’t have to prompt her to get ready. So long it may last so they say.
The Night before the big day
The night before the first day would be full of excitement so early night is not on the cards.
She goes upstairs, gets her clothes ready, makes sure her book bag is ready, reads her book and says goodnight with the cat lying on her chest.
We get through the summer break very quickly that we are almost blindsided by buzz.
How do you prepare for back to school days?
Do you have rituals too?
How are the first days of school preparation like where you are?
Notes for mom and dads
Parents are busy with work and housework.
And it is a big help to have a list of things or rituals to ease back into a new school year.
Do you have after school activities lined up for after school or at weekends like swimming?
Here is a list of things to pack in a swimming bag or a reminder if you already have one.
You might want to browse time management tips for parents when you have free time.
Why not browse for easy recipes for a dinner idea while you wait for your child to finish lessons?
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