6 Ways to Make Your First Day of (Home)School Great

I love school, and I always have – both as a student and as a teacher. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t have first-day jitters, though. I think it’s normal to feel a bit anxious about things that are new and unknown, so to help make that transition easier, I tried to make that first day fun and engaging – but there are certain things that need to happen on a first day.

Whether you’re homeschooling or in public school, it’s important to make expectations clear, and that typically needs to happen on the first day. Whether you’re introducing new curriculum, new goals, or a totally new schedule, your students need to understand the new structure – and that can be intimidating. By breaking these necessary-but-often-boring parts up with other fun and engaging activities, you can accomplish this while also keeping student energy high. Here are some of my favorite ways to kick off a new school year:

1. Start with a fun breakfast. We made ice cream sundaes for breakfast each year in fun parfait glasses. We added fruit and graham crackers or granola for more nutrition and fiber – and you could do frozen yogurt, too, in keeping with a more nutritional breakfast while maintaining the fun factor. My Big Helper is several years into college, and she still has ice cream for breakfast on the first day of each new semester – it’s that much of a tradition for her and helps ease into the newness. If ice cream isn’t your thing, though, go for something else fun that you don’t typically eat for breakfast. Pizza? Decadent waffles? Breakfast nachos – sliced potatoes or tots layered with scrambled eggs, ham or bacon, cheese, and diced tomatoes? Talk it up and let each kid personalize their meal to their own particular tastes, then take photos of their plate with their face. Splurging, in whatever yummy way you choose, definitely makes for a memorable first day, and it’s one you’ll look forward to year after year.
2. Introduce curriculum with something fun. Do your students have new subjects, or maybe just new books? Maybe they have a new component, like a new calculator, telescope, or microscope. Spend some time on this first day just getting familiar with it. Maybe they can see what kinds of words they can spell on the calculator, or choose things to look at under the microscope. For new material organization, let them design a front label for subject binders or notebook dividers. Give time to play with these new concepts, enough to explore but not get bored. Depending on their ages and abilities, they might design this with a computer graphic design program, with crayons and paper, or anything in between. The idea is to let them put their own stamp on their materials so they feel some ownership and connectedness with these new things.
3. Play a game! Why shouldn’t the first day be fun? Who says games can’t be educational, anyway? One of our favorites is Scrabble. Put on some relaxing music and see who can get the highest score. If you really want a challenge, keep track of scores year to year and watch your kids’ scores rise. Mine took it as a personal challenge to beat me and were super excited when they could really compete – and win. Other games that could provide this same kind of educational-but-fun challenge could be Monopoly Jr., Boggle, Boggle Jr., Blokus, or any kind of trivia game. Or, if your family really isn’t into games, do a puzzle. Solving jigsaw puzzles is really a math skill – it’s spatial relations, so borrow a puzzle from the library or grab a one at the store and have fun puzzling together. You could even find one with an image of something you’re going to study that year for extra thematic interest.
4. Do an art project. One of my favorite ways to kick off a new year was with some sort of integrated art-and-language project. We might read a super short poem, and then write our own version or choose a stylized thing, like a fingerprint, shirt, or doughnut, and design it to be characteristic of us. Then we’d write a short explanation of how that object lined up with our unique selves. When we were finished, we had a neat piece of art to hang on a bulletin board and also a memory piece to save. These showcase both their artistic abilities and their likes and traits of the time. This gives you information about where they are educationally at that moment and a keepsake to save for later. While they’re painting, coloring, or designing, you could play classical music, movie soundtracks, etc., or you could …
5. Do a read aloud! I read books out loud to my kids until mid-high school. We all liked it and it ended only reluctantly. The first day of school is the perfect time to break out that new and exciting book you want to read with them this fall. It could also be a fun time to reread a selection of ‘first day of school books, favorite picture books, or to look over book choices and make a decision together about what to read first.
6. Get others to join you! Fun is only multiplied when it’s shared. An easy way to get others on board is to invite them to join you – either in person or virtually – for one or multiple parts of the day. Our family lives far away, so they couldn’t join us for breakfast, but they’d have ice cream for breakfast, too, and we’d all text ice cream selfies back and forth. You could have a picnic at the park, a board game competition, or send art project selfies to friends or family. However you choose to include others, even hard things feel lighter when others are included – and fun things are even better.

So there you have it! Six ways to make the first day of your (home)school great – and to be honest, minus the ice cream, I did a lot of those same things when I taught in public school, too. The first day doesn’t have to be scary – with a bit of planning, it can be something you’ll all look forward to year after year.

Do you have any first-day traditions? Share them in the comments below!