Back to school ideas to prepare your preschooler

Back to school ideas to prepare your preschooler can vary, depending on expert advice. Of course, you want your preschooler to get ready in the best possible way.

For instance, you know that anxiety may arise when dropping off your preschooler at school.

However, you could probably lessen the stress and anxiety of these moments by planning, organizing, and discussing the new situation with your preschooler.  

Back to School Organization

Planning a back to school schedule may sound overwhelming. Many parents and caregivers don’t know where to start or what to include in that plan.

First, you might want to begin with a school schedule, meal plan, and family schedule. While your preschooler may spend most of his or her time in school, planning mornings and after-school can help with stressful days.

Also, knowing what you’ll prepare for meals can help with back to school organization. You might want to decide whether your preschooler will eat lunch or have a lunch from home.

Either way, ensuring you have weekly breakfast and lunch meal plans prepares you for crazy unexpected days. Do you have a family dedicated space at home?

Regardless of your area, consider setting a section for a family calendar with appointments, extracurricular activities, forms from school, backpack zone, and meal plan schedule. In that way, family members will know where to look for dates, times, and names when you’re not around.

More importantly, take time to plan back to school organization. Creating a system takes careful planning. Perhaps, you can meal plan one Sunday evening for the whole month, and the following day you can schedule appointments.  

Getting Your Preschooler Ready

With back-to-school organization comes setting expectations for your preschooler. Although your preschooler is young, he or she will start to develop organizational habits too.

So, prepare your preschooler in advance to encourage time management and independence. If you dedicated some time during the summer to talk about preschool, you’re one step ahead.

However, time may not always allow you to prepare your preschooler. So, designate two weeks or more to talk about changes in routine.

Perhaps, you might need to arrange transportation, meals, school supplies, and medical check-up. One of the best ways to prepare your preschooler is to encourage healthy eating and sleep habits.

For instance, you can motivate your preschooler about bath time, reading, and healthy snack before bedtime. Also, talk with your preschooler about the events that will occur.

Will morning routines be more hectic than before starting school? You could practice a morning routine of waking up at a specific time, getting ready in the morning, and going to the preschool.

Ease anxiety and morning chaos by practicing daily habits that your preschooler and yourself feel comfortable. 

Back to School Activities

While planning and organizing are excellent ways to cope with stressful situations for your preschooler, you might want to also encourage learning.

By dedicating time to reading, math, and writing, you provide a preschooler’s learning path. These learning activities don’t have to be rigorous and structured.

On the other hand, schedule a few hours throughout the day for back to school activities.

• For instance, reading time may already be a daily routine in your household.
• So, why not encourage reading other types of formats like poems, ebooks, or nursery rhymes?
• In this way, you broaden their literacy perspective.
• Also, you can add puppet, pretend, or finger play.

Other back to school learning activities can consist of learning numbers, identifying addition or subtraction, and dealing with money.

• While letters are essential for reading, numbers are crucial for understanding quantities.
• Of course, you could use flashcards to practice numbers and labels.
• However, you could also use sorting, matching, and scavenger games to introduce number-sense and recognition.

Another fun back to school activity is to integrate counting by adding color-by-number worksheets.

• Using counters or flashcards, encourage adding simple one to six numbers.
• Then, use the color-by-number bank to color in each section.
• That way, your preschooler practices number sense, addition, and color sorting. 

You can get a free copy of the Back To School Season Printable here.

Do you like these free printable and teaching strategies? Sign up for the newsletter to get more content to support the education of your preschooler. 

This activity in math is ideal for families and educators that follow the Core Knowledge curriculum and the Head Start program. The standards assessed in each activity are Goal: Compare Written Numerals, I-MR6.1a, II-MR6.1b, II-MR6.3.