Back To School Planning

School starts back early here (August 12th). I was wondering if anyone else starts planning five or six weeks out and what your routines are. We are already starting our school clothes shopping and reviewing a few key concepts from last year’s school work, for example. About two weeks before school starts back, I’ll start getting the girls up earlier in the mornings too to try to prepare for that horrid six a.m. alarm clock going off.

We school year round and started doing so pretty much because of the twins.  We just couldn’t change the routine when they were little. . .and voila. . .year round school.    But if we had a “back to school” I would do it that way too.  I think adjustment in routine is so hard on kids. . .especially small ones.  So to help alleviate that it makes good sense to get kids up a little earlier-I think it helps get them in the right frame of mind!

This will be our first adventure going to school because my daughter is starting kindergarten this August. We’ve done preschool, but that was only three times a week, for a couple hours a day, so something tells me we’re in for a big adjustment. My friend told me that her daughter got really involved in a bunch of extracurricular activities when she started kindergarten, so the actual school hours may just be a mere portion of the adjustments we’ll have to make.

Wow-I cannot fathom having extra curriculars as a kindergartner.  But now that I write that. . .my girls take ballet and soccer so I guess so!

Is it full day kinder or half day kinder?

My husband always says that he’d love to have a parent seminar to remind parents that preschool/kinder teachers expect and are prepared for kids to cry, be clingy and/or need time to adjust.    He says that where he works parents so often make it worse by being equally clingy or teary.  Cracks me up. . .anyway, for what it’s worth that’s his advice. 

For the most part, my kids have been on the same schedule for summer as they would be on for during the school year… bedtime is 8-9 (about an hour later) and we only do swim lessons during the school year (once a week and then twice a week during hte summer).. the swim lessons are at the same time year-round. the big difference for us this year is that my 4-year-old won’t be taking naps at preschool like he did last year, so he will definitely need to be in bed by 7 to get up at 6:15 the next month. My 7 year old adjusts pretty well to change… so about a week before school starts I’ll start changing back to an earlier bed time (and earlier wakeup time too!)