Back to School Books
- Gather your materials. You will need a composition book, a few sheets of fun card stock/ paper, fine tipped markers, teacher/school themed stickers, double stick tape and scissors.
- Start by making your front page. I layered some card stock and wrote a title noting the date and grade.
- Now it’s the fun part for the first page I wrote out some basics, like School and teacher names, and what they liked and do not like about school.
- The other pages were devoted to different subjects- I matched stickers to the themes like reading, math and phys. Ed. I only wrote on the right hand side leaving plenty of space for writing.
- Use open ended questions often but having fun true or false questionnaires included is fun too. Remember that this is supposed to be fun, and a tool to talk about your child’s day so don’t make it work. If they have a favorite subject, devote a little more time on that so that there is a lot of positivity, but don’t shy away from asking why they don’t like something else, what they need to work on or about the social aspects of school too.
- Do not forget to add pages that ask your child to share something they are proud of.
- Keep it somewhere accessible, if it goes to their bedroom it may never come back.
Books
“Miss Mingo and the First Day of School” by Jamie Harper is a delightful book. Miss Mingo is a flamingo and teacher who wants to know about her students on the first day of school. She starts the exercise by sharing some fun facts about being a flamingo , like why she is pink, and before you know it the whole class of different animals are sharing. This book not only shows kids that it’s okay to share about themselves but it is full of fun facts about animals in the fine print. I learned something I never knew about a Narwhal! It is a bit long for a toddler but each page highlights new animals and it’s easy to skip a few for those that aren’t ready for a book of this length. This is going on my buy list!
“The Kissing Hand” by Audry Penn is an absolute favorite . Chester is a raccoon who like most of us doesn’t like change. In his case it’s starting school. He wants to stay home with his mama and play with the friends he already has instead of going to school away from her and his friends. So his mama explains to him the magic of the kissing hand . The real magic is the message that we have to do things that scare us sometimes but that the love of our family is always with us to help us through. Go get this book.
- Gather your materials. For free art with a toddler I offered crayons or paint, a variety of brushes and I chose the paper , which in our case was a grocery bag. With an older child I would provide more choices.
- Allow your child to decide which paint color to start with
- Start painting with the brush of choice.
- Add another color,
brown was our winner, too bad on brown paper it doesn’t show up well. Resist overriding your child’s decisions even if green would have looked better, he chose brown so brown it was. - Let dry and cut into a fun shape if your child wants !
Maybe it’s because there have only been 4 years since I turned 3 that I didn’t go back to school in the fall but the season is all about back to school for me, so the theme for my books today is all about school!
” Never Ride You Elephant To School” by Doug Johnson is a silly cause and effect book much like the better written Laura Joffee Numeroff ” If You Give A Mouse A Cookie” series. The story is funny, and the elephant’s destructiveness will appeal to young children’s natural inner wrecking ball but all in all it’s somewhat forgettable.
