First Day Traditions ~ Back to Homeschool Blog Hop

As I said earlier this week, we have tended towards a year-round/take-as-much-time as-we-need approach to home schooling when the girls were younger. There is just something about taking a least a couple of weeks off at the end of summer before beginning a new school year.

We’re odd ducks here because I call it the first day of school and it is the start of a new school calendar but we might not actually be starting new curriculum. We might just be picking up where we left off. (For Turtlegirl, especially, we are not really starting anything new in September.)  But I want there to be something different.  Something special.  Something that marks the changing of one school year to another.

One thing that I have always done was, to quote Turtlegirl, “pass out pretty new school supplies like new pencils and notebooks.  That’s always my favorite.”  BooBear remembers that back when we used Sonlight I would often save “Box Day,” the opening of the box with all the wonderful new books, for the first day of school.

Most years I do take First Day of School pictures.  Tailorbear tells me that she doesn’t necessarily like those but she does like the school supplies. I am planning to take first day of school pictures again this year. Sorry Tailorbear you’re stuck!

Some years we would go out to dinner and there has been a time or two when we’ve gone out for breakfast. This year we’ll have a big breakfast. I’m thinking waffles and sausage or waffles and bacon. Our official first day is September 1st which happens to be Labor Day so I suspect bacon cheeseburgers will be on the menu with my baked potato salad.

It is our tradition to take that first day and set up notebooks and organize the magazine racks that hold spiral notebooks and workbooks. This year, in addition to passing out color coded spiral notebooks, I’ll be handing a Student Log Book to Turtlegirl and a customized student planner to Tailorbear.

Speaking of color-coded spiral notebooks let me take a moment to tell you what I mean. Each summer, during the back to school sales, I pick up several spiral notebooks. I pick up about 10 in 4 3 colors so that each daughter has her own set. We can tell at a glance whose notebook is lying around by the color of the cover. I also like having colored post it tabs and note pads, and highlighters to help me see at a glance who is leaving me a note, or where each girl is in a shared book. I even use those same colors to color-code the girls in Homeschool Tracker!

I just want the first day of school to be fun, memorable, and set a positive tone for our school year. Do you have any special traditions for your First Day of School?

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