- 8 Steps to Prepping for the New {Home} School Year {5 Days of Back to Homeschool – The Early Years}
- Easing into a New {Home} School Year {5 Days of Back to Homeschool – The Early Years}
- 3 Tools for Teaching Teens & Twenties {5 Days of Back to Homeschool – The Early Years}
- First Day of {Home} School Traditions {5 Days of Back to Homeschool – The Early Years}
- Homeschooling for First Grade & Under – Avoiding Overload {5 Days of Back to Homeschool – The Early Years}
As year round homeschoolers, even though we take off the month of July, we still do summer school. Summer school tends to be the most hated subjects because they are the ones I don’t want to lose ground in. This year was math.
In order to try to build a little excitement around the new school year & prepare them for getting back to the grind even though its still summer, we have a few first day of school traditions.
1. Special Breakfast
We start our first school day with a good breakfast so that we start off on the right foot. This year, I think we will make egg sandwiches — eggs, cheese & ham on an English muffin. We will also have juice (which we almost never have) and fresh fruit. I may make blueberry muffins as a mid-morning snack as well.
2. Circle Time
After breakfast and once the high five chores are completed, we will start circle time. This year, we will start with our devotion, morning prayers, character studies, the pledge of allegiance, and a little from our current Catholic catechism book for children.
3. First Day Photo
Every year, we take a photo of the kids on the front porch starting age 3. It’s fun to see how they grow :). I considered buying a special first day of school outfit for the resident clotheshorses, but they have a ton of clothes already.
4. Scavenger hunt for school supplies
This year, I decided to give them a present of new school supplies. I always buy them, but don’t usually bring them all out right away or make a big deal of it. This year, I bought some pretty things and some new basics and sent them on a hunt to find them thanks to the Happy Home Fairy! This was their favorite part of the day!
5. Picnic & nature walk for lunch
The girls love picnics, so we planned to pack up our lunch and have a picnic and nature walk. I wanted to take the girls to the state hospital grounds. They are supposed to have 50 different trees on the property. Alas, due to time wasting and whinning, we didn’t have time before our chiropractor appointment
5. Field trip
I had considered doing another field trip, but the Little Man’s nap schedule wouldn’t accommodate it. Perhaps, we will go on a field trip for the first day the PS kids go back to school–I’d like to see how much the lake level went up at the Old Mission Lighthouse this year!
We may also sneak a little book work in, but sometimes it consists more of read-alouds for my bookworms and I’m okay with that!
Do you have any first day of school traditions?
This post is part of the 5 Days of Back to Homeschool Blog Hop by the Schoolhouse Review Crew.
Check out these other crew members participating in the hop:
Dawn @ Double O Farms
Tess @ Circling Through This Life
Lisa Marie @ The Canadian Homeschooler
Lexi @ Lextin Academy
Karen @ My Harbor Lights
Joanie @ Simple Living Mama
Lisa @ Home to 4 Kiddos
Lori @ Home: where life happens
Next Level Wellness
27 September 2014 at 10:04 AM (10 years ago)These are fun traditions to continue. It will surely make learning more fun and interesting for the kids. Keep it up!
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Lori H
12 August 2014 at 11:11 PM (10 years ago)You have shared some neat ideas of first day back traditions. I like the field trip and nature hike ideas. We may need to try one of those.
Lori H´s last blog post ..What You DON’T Need
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jen Reply:
August 14th, 2014 at 3:04 PM
I’m so glad you stopped by!!
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Lisa
12 August 2014 at 10:37 PM (10 years ago)I love all of your traditions! 🙂 We usually go out for a special breakfast, take photos with our “new grade” signs and go to a local park/nature center.
Lisa´s last blog post ..5 Days of Back to Homeschool- Day 2
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jen Reply:
August 14th, 2014 at 3:04 PM
That sounds awfully similar ;).
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Lexi
12 August 2014 at 9:31 PM (10 years ago)Love these traditions! We do the photos as well. Some of our other traditions include making tie-dye homeschool uniforms, getting new pj’s for our first day, and eating cake for breakfast!
Lexi´s last blog post ..{Hey Girl Homeschool Guide} How I Planned for Our Homeschool Year – 2014 Edition
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jen Reply:
August 14th, 2014 at 3:03 PM
New PJ’s is fun! I may have to add that one :). If i thought I could get the kids to DO anything after eating cake, I would so do that one. My kids are really blood sugar sensitive (though not diabetic or anything).
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Tess
12 August 2014 at 1:56 PM (10 years ago)I’ll be posting about First Day Traditions on Friday! We used to go out to dinner but that doesn’t happen anymore. We do try to do a special breakfast, take photos and I hand out new supplies. I also plan a special dinner since we won’t be going out to eat. We school year around but I still try to have a FIRST day in September.
Tess´s last blog post ..Planning: The Course of Study
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jen Reply:
August 14th, 2014 at 3:02 PM
DInner sounds fun but I think we were crazy busy that day. I have no idea what we did to tell you the truth and it was just last week!
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