Keep back-to-school time from becoming chaos by getting things in order before the first day.
1) Get your new schedule (home extracurricular and school)
Once you have your student’s schedule for the year check out and circle important dates (holidays, early dismissals, field trips) and add them to your calendar to stay ahead of the game. When the school year begins, time seems to move much faster, and these important dates catch up with you. We even recommend setting notifications a few days or weeks prior that helps serve as a reminder.
There are many ways to stay organized with multiple schedules: a physical calendar, which tends to fill up fast; a digital calendar, which can sometimes get lost in the sea of notifications; or a learning management system, a centralized location of everything relating to your child’s education.
2) Homework station – de-stress and relax
Creating a routine is very important to getting back into the swing of things, and setting an environment is just as important. In the age of so much digital technology, it can be important to create certain home locations where work can be done with limited distraction. Parents are already in competition with technology for every second of their child’s attention now think of families with more than one child, that becomes even more tricky. Giving your children a space where they can de-stress, relax, and focus on their schoolwork or even just reading leads to a more organized home which ultimately leads to more success down the road.
3) School supplies: adapters, cables, pens, pencils, notebook paper, & more.
This one seems obvious but staying on top of the necessary supplies your children need is important too. Like losing socks, you would be surprised how fast students go through pencils, erasers, pens, and other school supplies. Any parent knows giving your child any excuse or reason not to do their schoolwork, they will take it. We recommend having a supply station (maybe at your homework station) that will allow you to track what needs to be replenished. With ALOE Back to School, we’ve even seen parents use the calendar as a bi-weekly reminder to check up on school supply stocks.
4) Set up a parent inbox
How many times has your child forgotten to get you to sign something or is throwing papers at you to sign at 6 AM? Organize this cadence so that when your student arrives home any papers, notifications, field trip signatures, and permission slips are delivered to you. Some parents may be able to take a mental note and ask daily but as we said prior when you’re juggling several different children, lunches, and supplies, you will have a day you slip up.
Whether you have an assigned mini-mailbox for school notices, or those papers go on the dining room table have something in place to remind you of that daily check-in. Nowadays, everything is digital, so you will also have to check your email inbox for any notices from school. From there, please make note of any important dates, deadlines things must be returned by, and school events, and add them to your calendar. Again, we find having a separate calendar for school-related activities is always more organized than one master calendar.
5) Meal Planning
Weekdays during the school year get busier as the year goes on, meal prep will save you a headache. I’m going to paint a picture for you, it’s the middle of winter, you’ve had a long workday, and all you want to do is order food for yourself and call it a night (which is an option) but this becomes pricey. You’ll thank yourself when you aren’t sitting wondering what I am going to make for dinner tonight, with planning. One advantage of the digital age is there are plenty of other people who have the same problem as you, you can find millions of recipes on the internet, when you find one make sure to save it somewhere and begin your collection.
6) Get a Digital Planner
Last and certainly the most important, get a digital planner. “Why not a physical planner?” you may ask, physical planners are great as well, primarily for quick to-do lists, and jotting down something important on a phone call, but they are also limited. A physical planner is static, meaning it cannot change over time (without excessive erasing) a digital planner is active and allows you to keep track of everything from schoolwork, to shopping lists, and multiple kids’ schedules, which can be otherwise very confusing, fast. We use ALOE Back to School to stay on top of this.
ALOE Back to School software offers a full system for tracking students’ class schedules, homework, and extracurricular activities. You can also assign each student their profile and their classes in ALOE. They are attached to a parent contact so that every assignment or extracurricular activity is automatically reported to the parents and students. Another great feature of ALOE Back to School is ALOE will automatically notify both the parent and the student by email when a homework assignment is coming up, is nearly due, and is due.
There are many ways to get organized for back to school whatever you choose to make sure you have a plan, prepare, are consistent, and are thorough in your execution. We currently offer a 30-day free trial of ALOE Back to School and you may cancel any time before the trial ends and will not be charged.
