Peaceseeker Posted August 15, 2017 Share Posted August 15, 2017 (edited) I was really racking my brain as to how to make the first day of school fun for my 6th and 8th graders. None of us (including me) were ready to be done with our summer break and hit the books. I could tell we were all dreading it but I made my lesson plans and had everything ready to go for Monday morning. I figured we would just rip it off like a bandaid, lol... I don't have breakfast eaters so the whole special breakfast thing wouldn't work. I kept dreading Monday morning just feeling like it wasn't going to go well. In the end I woke them up and told them to get dressed and I had a surprise in store. We drove to an urban area with shops and browsed bookstores and coffee shops and went out for a nice lunch. All my lesson plans are officially one day off but it was worth it I think. I tried to emphasize the flexibility of homeschooling in our lives and we talked a lot about our upcoming year and what we were going to do in each subject. We talked having good attitudes about our workload. Maybe it will pay off. I feel like the last couple of years it has definitely gotten less fun and spontaneous than it was in the elementary grades when time was on our side! Definitely more of a get it done, hit the books mentality lately and I wanted to show them we could still be spontaneous sometimes even at these ages. We will see if that was a successful transition to the actual workload for the rest of this week. 😉 I am hopeful there will not be too much groaning and gnashing of teeth now. Anyone else do something fun with their older kids to transition to the new school year? I need ideas for the future! Edited August 15, 2017 by CaliforniaDreaming 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peaceseeker Posted August 15, 2017 Author Share Posted August 15, 2017 Hmm after reading back over that maybe I should call it a fun spontaneous last day of summer instead of first day of school, lol.. We did go over our plans and talk about school, but we didn't actually 'do school' yesterday. Although they did come home and read the new books they picked out! Well in their minds that was the first day of school but I start counting today,lol... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aurelia Posted August 17, 2017 Share Posted August 17, 2017 I guess you could do school as usual in the morning and surprise them by taking the afternoon off and doing something fun. Or giving them new outfits or backpacks or something. We usually take pictures with DD and all her school books in her "school uniform" (a khaki or navy skirt and white polo, like the uniforms most schools have around here - not that she ever wears it for school, but she might wear the pieces with other outfits). It's neat to see how much she's grown and she has something that looks schoolish for the relatives. I got DD a new backpack this year to replace the "embarrassing" Hello Kitty backpack she's had since she was, um, 4. (It was still in great shape until the end of last year!) It'll probably only get used for packing for sleepovers like the last one was, but she did get to help pick it out and I got it at a Back to School sale, so that counts, right? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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