First Day of School Traditions

While this is our first official year homeschooling, we have been doing homeschool totschool and preschool for several years and every year we kick off our year with some special first day of school traditions. I look forward to our first day as it's such a special time together, making precious memories and I cannot wait to repeat our special traditions year after year. This year we added a few extra fun activities that will more than likely become a part of our first day every year.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL BREAKFAST

I absolutely love any reason to celebrate special moments with special themed meals. We absolutely love gathering around our table and just doing life with one another. The kids LOVE when I decorate the table and make special foods based around a theme. The joy it brings them is worth the time it sometimes takes to put it together.

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One of the perks of being a former teacher, now homeschool mama, is that I have lots of school themed things that I can use for decor. Globes always make an appearance on our first day of school table as they are one of my favorite things to collect!

The night before our first day of school, I gathered up some globes, books, pencils, and rulers and arranged them our table. I also set out some red apple plates I created with red party plates and construction paper. The kids LOVE fancy paper straws on special occasions so I finished our table off with some red cups, straws, and napkins.

I always decorate after putting the kids to bed so that it is a surprise for them when they come down on the first day.

I have made different things over the years, but have decided that the stress of trying to make something fancy in the morning when we are all already so hungry is just not worth it so we just eat a normal to us breakfast on our "fancy" apple plates and the kids love it just the same as if I had made our food look like something school themed.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL PICTURES

After we finish our breakfast, we ease into our first day with our back to school pictures. I love taking pictures to hold onto precious memories. I even got in on pictures this year because it was my first day just as much as it was there's. I am so thankful I get to be a mama to my little cuties and thankful to also be their teacher.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL KEEPSAKES

The last two years we have completed these questionnaires from Teaching Mama and I cannot wait to see how their answers stay the same/change over the years.

Last year I saw the cutest keepsake hand print poem on Everyday Learn and Play''s Instagram account and had to recreate it for myself. I have a thing for preserving those precious hand prints and love any excuse to get out the paint and paint their precious hands. Their little prints change so quickly.

Our pictures, keepsake hand prints, and our questionnaires go into our school memories binders and are tucked away on my shelf so I can quickly pull them out throughout the year to add in our special memories and keepsakes.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL SPECIAL TREATS

Our kids don't get gifts or toys throughout the year besides on their birthday or Christmas so a couple years ago we started giving them a little something on the first day of school to make it an extra special day. This year the kids got the Richard Scarry Busy Town Eye Found It game that I found at the thrift store a few months ago and the complete set of Little House on the Prairie books that I purchased just after the start of last school year on Mercari for only $13. The kids were thrilled to get both the game and book and we cannot wait to start reading the books together. We are Little House on the Prairie obsessed in this house.


We played a round of the game together on our first day and had an absolute blast.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL EXTRAS

After lunch and rest, the kids and I made a special banana bread recipe together. One of our favorite things to do together is bake and cook so this was a super special time together. My daughter and husband my both have a sugar intolerance so we cannot eat any refined sugar in our house which makes having special treats hard because EVERYTHING takes sugar. I have been working to find or tweak recipes that don't take sugar or that I can eliminate the sugar in and finally have a small selection of special treats that I can make that we all love.

We ended our day playing outside. It's been rather cool here lately for the end of August so it's been perfect for playing outside!!!

Our first day was such a special day and was a fantastic start to what I know will be a fantastic year. We are all so excited to see what God has in store for our year and cannot wait to continue playing, learning, and growing together.