Back-to-School Preparation Tips for Parents | Reduce Overwhelm for the Family

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Back-to-school preparation tips for parents are more than what school supplies to get and meet the teacher. Finding ways to simplify life for you and your child is essential for a successful school year.

Now that you have found ways to not overschedule your family, I thought you might like some of my back-to-school preparation tips for parents. These are the techniques and tools my family uses to help reduce overwhelm during the school year.

I’m a working mother of 3 kids and my husband and I found that life could get pretty crazy during the school year. There were years that we had 3 kids in 3 different schools. One in high school, one in junior high, and the baby of the family in elementary school.

Over the years we simplified life for us bit by bit. I hope that you find something that might help your family. These back-to-school preparation tips for parents include home organization tips, parenting tips for helping your child start the year with less overwhelm, and tips for creating routines now that will help simplify the life at home during the school year.

If you are overwhelmed just thinking about school starting then it’s time to truly understand what areas of your life give you the most balance.

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Back-to-School Preparation Tips For Parents

Here’s the shortlist for you busy moms that need to scan for now:

1. Organize the Family Calendar by entering the important school dates for each school.
2. Double-check the school contacts on your phone to make sure they are accurate.
3. Prepare for the influx of paper and how to keep it organized without cluttering up the house.
4. Have a whiteboard for the family to communicate important dates.
5. Prepare to delegate the school lunches.
6. Start a meal planning habit.
7. Preparing your child for the school year, being aware of anxiety they might be having, coaching them on ways to simplify their life at school and after school. (More tips below)
8. Buy only what you need for school supplies & price compare (I saved 50% off by finding an online sale that the local store honored).
9. Do a Budget Review and start setting aside money so you minimize the surprises.
10. Create family fun nights so it isn’t all “back to school” talks and preparations.

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Organize the Family Calendar

It may seem tedious but you will thank me in the end. Gather the individual school schedules that should be posted on the school website. Enter the school holidays, PD days, and any other special event days listed. Sometimes they will list the “orange shirt” days to help give parents a heads up.

We had 3 kids in 3 different schools at one point and found that having the school times and school dates helped the family keep track of who needed to be where and when. We use a free family organizer that is compatible with Android and Apple products. The family calendar helps me share the planning role with the family and has saved my sanity many times!

Don’t forget about those after-school activities! While you are organizing the family calendar, enter the days and times for each activity so that the whole picture is in front of you. The less you have to remember the better. Let the family calendar remember for you!

Double-check the school contacts

This might seem trivial but I have forgotten to update the school contacts on my phone and had to spend time googling the phone number or address. If I had just checked in August then I wouldn’t have to worry about how to call the school when an emergency or conflicting event happened. Simple, but necessary to save time just in case!

When you are at the dance competition trying to do your daughter’s hair and remember you forgot to call in her school absence for the day, having the number on your phone is handy! True story!

Managing School Forms and Endless Paper

Prepare for the influx of paper and how to keep it organized without cluttering up the house. The article linked gives you some tips for managing paper and reducing that common type of clutter in the home.

Being mentally prepared to spend time filling in the forms and staying organized is also necessary. Make sure to create some time in the evenings to fill in the forms so they don’t get lost or forgotten.

This is advice from a mom that has had to tear the house apart trying to find that form so my child could go on a field trip. All while the said child was crying and devastated that he might not be able to go on the said field trip!

A whiteboard for Important Dates

Remember the family calendar? Well, that is important but so is the backup; a simple magnetic whiteboard to communicate must not forget dates.

I have one of these in my Family Communication Center and it has saved my bacon a few times. The family calendar helps with upcoming dates but for longer-term or extremely busy months, we use the board to remember special school days, field trips, exams, tournaments, and dance recitals.

I’ve filled in school forms and used the magnetic board to remind the kids to take them back to school. They’ve used the board to remember dates for tests and for the forms that need to be filled out.

School Lunches

I haven’t made school lunches for over 17 years. Seriously, I’m not kidding! It has not only simplified my morning routine, but the kids gained skills that they wouldn’t have if I hadn’t made this decision years ago. I started in kindergarten and our youngest is now in junior high.

To get started you will need to get the kids to help you plan out lunch-type foods they are willing to eat. Why buy food that will go in the garbage at school? Healthy decisions were a must for us so we had to find compromises for your picky child. We had one that hated fruit but would eat veggies. Fresh prepped veggies that he could take in the lunch were always included.

Then get the kids to help organize the fridge and pantry so they know where the lunch items are for an easy lunch-making routine. Having dedicated locations not only helps them but it helps you see at a quick glance what is needed for the weekly grocery run. Even better, train the kids to add the items to the grocery list when it is running low.

Start a Meal Planning Habit

I’m a huge advocate for planning meals for the week. There a few reasons that I talked about in my post, 5 Reasons to Start Meal Planning Today|Helpful Guide to Avoid Fast Food but the biggest reason was to save my sanity at the end of the day. Having to think of what to make for dinner at the end of a long workday is very draining.

If I had any hope of improving my sanity and stop being short with the kids when they asked what was for dinner as soon as I walked through the door, I needed to plan the meals and display the plan for the family to see. The family would even help make the meals when I had to rush off to work early or when I was late getting home for some reason.

I’ve included a few meal planning solutions for busy parents in the post 5 Meal Planning Solutions | When Life is a Constant Whirlwind.  When parents are not given much time in the week to feed the family before going off to another activity, making sure you plan ahead is essential for mom’s sanity!

Preparing Your Child for the School Year

School can be overwhelming for students. Looking for ways to simplify life for them and coaching them to be as organized as possible, helps reduce the anxiety for everyone. Here are a few tips that we have used for all three of the kids. Our youngest seems to be benefitting the most because she has seen her brothers not take our advice, and has also seen the benefit of taking our advice.

1. Create a “how to get to school and home” plan

   Plan with the kids a safe walking route, bus route, talk about traffic safety, have backup plans and make sure the kids know your phone numbers. We’ve had a day home provider take her family on vacation without informing us. Yep, you read that right.

   We found out she was on vacation when our daughter called from the school to say she wasn’t home. Thankfully the school was still open, she had the smarts to go back to the school, and she could stay there until I could get there.

   I was able to contact the day home provider only to get an “oops sorry I forgot to tell you that we are in Disneyland for the week”. This Mama Bear wasn’t too happy, as I’m sure you could imagine.

   I not only had to find care for the week but I had to find a more permanent solution. That day home provider was essentially fired. Thankfully a friend was able to help out until we could sort through that chaos!

2. Prepare evening and morning routines for the kids

   Coach the kids to start thinking about what they need to do to get ready for school. Start getting their evening routines back to normal, and even having them set an alarm again to create the habit of waking themselves up.

   I’ve always been the parent that was off to work before the family got up so my husband was the only one there. We gave the kids the responsibility of waking up on time.

   There were years that the older kids walked the younger ones to school and then caught their bus. This was a sneaky way to make sure the high school kids got on the bus in time for school. It worked!

   They had enough compassion for their little brother or sister to not want them to miss school, so they made sure they were up and ready when everyone needed to leave the house.

3. Morning Routine To-do lists for school

   Brainstorm a list with the kids, for the kids to follow. This is a list of activities and items they can’t forget to do or take to school. You can use a whiteboard or paper checklist that’s laminated. We use the To-do list function in the Free Cozi Family Planner app.

   Our daughter created her own list and uses it every morning to help her remember the school and dance supplies she needs, along with the basic “need to do” health activities she needs to do every morning. She loves it and finds it is better than the whiteboard and more flexible than the paper checklist. She adds to it as she finds other things she can’t forget to do.

4. Planning for school assignments and tests

   Find a solution to help your child remember dates for assignments and tests, and plan their available time around the after-school activities. Planners are good for some but my junior high and high school kids found it just another item to try to remember to take to class, and it added clutter to their desk space.

   In the end, the planners were a waste of money because they were always left in the locker unused or rarely used. We have found that the Free Cozi Family Planner app was a great solution. A simple to-do list was dedicated to the child to add important assignments and test due dates.

5. Coach the kids to plan their time

   Busy kids need to be coached to use their time efficiently during the school year. They don’t have much time so they will need to work on a project over the given timeline from the teacher, or prep for a test over several days. To help coach them you will need to help them plan when to work on the assignments, projects, and test prep over time.

   A busy after-school schedule makes this challenging so coaching them to use their time efficiently will help reduce the stress in the house. Doing the work for them doesn’t help them and if they fail to use their time well, then a reminder to go to the teacher to ask for an extension may just be something they don’t want to do regularly. The teacher may not allow it either! Consequences are hard but good lessons.

   Preparing for tests takes less time when they can review the day’s lesson at the end of the day, doing study notes as you go. Our daughter found that this worked for her. She tried a few different ways over the year from recipe cards, summary notes, and presentations she prepared to help quiz herself.

   The best study tool she’s landed on to date is Quizlet.com. It is a tool her teachers were using and she found that she could do study notes for her exams and make studying actually fun. Her plan this year is to create quizzes for each day’s learning so that preparing for a unit test doesn’t take as long.

6. Organizing tips for their locker

   Junior high and high school can be overwhelming and schedules change depending upon the day, which adds to the stress. Our daughter was having trouble remembering to bring home items on Friday for the weekend.

   A simple solution for her was to bring Thursday’s textbooks and binders home on Thursday for the weekend prep, and then Friday’s classes were brought home Friday. Nothing was left at school, and the stress of not being able to finish an assignment or prepare for a test was avoided.

   There are 2 items I recommend as must-haves for lockers: a shelf in the locker, and zipper binders. The shelf keeps snowy wet boots on the bottom of the locker while gaining more room for binder and textbook organizing.  Zipper binders keep everything contained even if they don’t use the rings (including permission forms).

   Help them develop a habit of keeping the binder organized by putting daily handouts in the rings during their review at the end of the day. All 3 of my kids have learned this lesson the hard way.

   Another tip for the locker came when I was discussing this article with my daughter. She mentioned that if she hangs her coat up with her backpack, then she can’t get into her backpack easily. I suggested she take her school supplies out of the bag when she gets to school. A simple suggestion but she is going to do that to save time between classes.

7. Survival Kit for Girls

   I wish I had this when I was a preteen and teen! It would have saved me some embarrassing moments. Lake Life State of Mind wrote about The Survival Kit and I’m putting this on the must-haves for my daughter’s locker. She suggests the following list of items:

 

• Zippered pouch
• Sanitary napkins and/or tampons (Base this decision on age and personal preference for your child.)
• Flushable wipes
• Extra panties in a Ziploc bag
• Brush
• Hair ties and bobby pins
• Lip balm/chapstick
• Tissues
• Nail file
• Oil-absorbing sheets
• Mini deodorant
• Hand sanitizer
• Dental floss
• Lotion
• Q-tips

Buy only what you need

Go through what survived the previous year, and make a list of what you need. Schools will give you a suggested list and many times items aren’t necessary for your child. If the items are specific like a specific model of a calculator, I will get it so my child is successful. But other items might not be necessary for your child.

Price compare before heading out. I recently found an item I was looking for online for 1/2 price. It was a local office supply store. When I arrived I discovered that the item wasn’t on sale at the store, but the online site showed it on sale. I asked for the savings and got it. The lesson: do your research and ask for the discount. I saved over $26 on this one item!

Budget Review

Taking the time to do a budget review will help manage the money chaos. We have found that we can minimize the surprises to the budget by saving for certain expenses over the year. Regular bills are paid with automatic bill payments during pay weeks, then we don’t worry about missing bill payments during busy times of the year.

Make Time for Family Fun

Create family fun nights so it isn’t all “back to school” talks and preparations. Going back to school and preparing for it can suck the fun out of the remaining summer. Find ways to add fun back into the summer and reconnect with the kids before life gets crazy again. Game nights, camping, hiking, and backyard bonfires are simple solutions for the entire family.

I hope you found some tips that will help your family. These back-to-school preparation tips for parents can help any working mom simplify life during those crazy 10 months. The family calendar, to-do lists for the child, being prepared for the influx of forms and notifications, meal planning, parenting advice for coaching your child for success at school, and money-saving tips.

The best reminder of the lot was to create the family fun nights so it wasn’t all about school. After all, summer still isn’t over!

How will you be enjoying the rest of the summer?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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