"Not back to school" traditions...

After seeing all our family and friends begin the "back to school" postings with adorable pictures of their children getting ready to begin a new year at school, I decided to come up with some traditions of our own. Our preschooler still hasn't grasped the full concept of homeschooling and needless to say he was a little disappointed when he realized he wouldn't be joining his friends at their schools. Hence, our decision for some fun "not back to school" traditions was created to get our preschooler excited for his own exciting year of learning at home! Here is what we came up with:

• A new "school outfit" which in this case happens to be a new pair of pajamas special for our first day back at learning. Funnily enough our preschooler loved it! And it gave us a good laugh because more often than not we do most of our learning still in our pajamas in the morning.

 

 

• A special celebration breakfast for our first day! This can be anything from something as simple as pancakes to even going out for a special breakfast, just us. I let our preschooler have complete choice over what we would have. This year he chose pancakes and chocolate milk, I made them a little special by adding sprinkles and whip cream to them!

• Changing our entire learning area! This is something I actually look forward to ,but I personally think giving our learning areas in our home a fresh look adds to the excitement for the new year. This year we made just few subtle changes such as divided learning areas in both our kitchen and now our living room, a little reading nook, and more learning surfaces like magnet boards and white erase boards at his height level.

 

• New routines (in my opinion better routines) for our toddlers. We now have started to implement a "behavior chart" in our household we refer to it as a character chart to emphasize the importance of making good choices. You can find the printable of this chart here. If you are anything like me and love the idea of a routine or are tired of answering your own toddlers multiple times a day what we are doing then you will love these daily schedule cards that you can find here. And lastly I wanted to have my preschooler be more involved in Montessori approaches to learning self care, at this time we are focusing on brushing our teeth. To help him make sure he is remembering morning and night we found a printable checklist here and have it hanging in the bathroom for him.

 

• Lastly, we choose a fun family outing to celebrate our first week back in Fall. We leave the decision of how to celebrate completely up to our preschooler and this year he has decided on a Frozen Yogurt family date! Here is to a wonderful new year learning at home and we hope you all enjoy some "not back to school" traditions of your own!