Preparing for the return to school
It’s hard to believe that summer is already nearly coming to a close and as much as we aren’t ready as adults, our kids probably aren’t ready either.
Most of the kids I see in speech therapy have Autism and one thing that can be pretty common for those kids is having a tough time with transitions.
But let’s be real - transitioning from having a mostly unstructured, play-based summer to a structured classroom and a rigorous schedule is TOUGH!
Creating a routine for back-to-school:
Sleep schedules are probably bonkers by the end of summer! Start working on getting back into a good bedtime routine now. Today. You’ll thank me later.
Get yourself organized - create a space in your house for their bookbags, lunchboxes, etc.
It doesn’t have to be fancy, we can dream of the Pinterest-worthy mudroom later. But maybe a few hooks for backpacks, a dedicated place for school supplies, etc.
Think about keeping a countdown of the number of days or number of sleeps until school starts.
Preparing for the first day butterflies
A lot of feelings, nervous and excited energy are bound to come up for our kids as they get ready to go back to school. As we know as adults, these feelings are mostly from fear of the unknown and not knowing what to expect, so here are some things we can do to get kids thinking about school:
Visit their school!
For obvious things like meet the teacher night, but even before that! Go drive by and talk about! Point out to your kid what you see - a playground, a place for the school buses, the spot a parent might drop off their child. If you can, go play on the playground.Talk about how they’re going to get to school, especially if they’ll be riding a bus.
(Here’s a fun book about riding on a bus if you’re kid has a good sense of humor! Engage in play about going on a bus - here’s a wicked cool pop-up tent for that or you can use your dining room chairs!)Engage in some pretend play about school!
Take turns being the teacher, student, bus driver, librarian, music teacher, speech therapist, and more. Practice walking through your house like you might walk through a hallway - let’s see how quiet we can be, I wonder if we can stay in a line.Here’s a fun Peppa Set for pretend school. If you have a toy house of some kind, you can also turn that into school! Or use an old amazon box as your pretend school!
Take your kid shopping with you for their school supplies! Allow them to have some creative freedom for choosing things, where possible. If you don’t want them to have complete creative freedom, try giving them an option between two choices that they are able to have.
Hopefully that helps you start thinking of ideas of how to prepare your child for going back to school!
We’ll be talking on the blog in a couple of weeks about supporting older kids in school, you know the kids….
…with the messy backpacks
…disorganized desks
…who are notoriously losing assignments
Don’t you worry, we’ve got some tips and strategies to help support those kids, too! Make sure to follow us on Instagram to stay in-the-know for when that post is published!
