Mommy's Guide to Starting a New School Year

Even though Charlotte has been attending her school for two years now in the Mother's Morning Out program, I was still nervous about her moving up with new teachers and starting official pre-school.  I found some things that have worked for us and thought I would share in case you're in need of any of the same solutions that I was!

Picking Out Clothes
Charlotte is very vocal these days about what she will and won't wear.  I was concerned about her wearing dresses that she loves but are too short or outfits that are too nice to play in at school and so wanted to give her a way to have some control over her outfit but also limit her options.  Just having me pick out three options to let her choose from doesn't work for us, she always wants one more option, so I needed something different.

I ended up dividing her closet into sections and having a school clothes, fancy clothes (i.e. church), leotards, and play clothes.  A few days before school started I reorganized and explained the system to her and told her what she was going to do.  When she needed to pick out an outfit I would tell her what section to pick from and then she could pick anything she wanted from that section.  I hung all of her pants/skirts/shorts/leggings with the tops that they went with and attached the hangers together so she was picking a whole outfit and not trying to add black leggings (her favorite) to everything.

I did have to give up a measure of control, after all, I have no idea which outfit she's going to pick each day, but I am still ensuring that she picks an outfit that is appropriate for the occasion and that fits so for right now that's good enough for me.  And in case yours has some favorites that would be worn over and over again, I made a rule that until she wears everything (or most everything) in her school clothes section that the clean school clothes will go into the play clothes section.  We also have her pick out an outfit for the next day the night before (when Daddy's there too!) and explained at the beginning that what she picks is what she wears and that there will be no changing.  Again, it works so far but we'll see how that goes as the year progresses.

Getting to know your teacher
A few year's ago I saw that Hillary at The Other Mama posted a teacher questionnaire to give to your child's teachers when they start a new school year.  I thought it was a great idea and downloaded it, modified it, and printed it out and was all set to give it to Charlotte's teachers but I chickened out.  What exactly I was chickening out from I don't know, but I thought that it would make me seem silly and like a know-nothing parent to her teachers.  So I just gave them generic gifts throughout the year and got to know them slowly.

The next year, I was a little more savvy and more confident in my Momma-ing abilities and I gave those same teachers (she had them again) my printed off sheet.  They gave it back to me and that allowed me to surprise them with little happy's throughout the year of their favorite snack and soft drink and get them personalized gifts for the big occasions.  I loved being able to walk in to pick Charlotte up with something to give them a little pep in their step and it never failed that the days that I would bring a treat they would say, "How did you know that I needed that today?!?!"  God can definitely work through Diet Coke and Snickers people!

This year I went even a little further and went ahead and put a little happy together for Charlotte's teachers when I picked her up on the first day of school.  I wasn't sure how long she'd be crying and knew that there was at least one other three year old crying when I left so I figured that they could use a pick me up.  So when I ran into Target during school I picked up a Camelbak cup for both of them and put the teacher questions inside along with an iTunes gift card and tied a cute note to the top.  Hopefully it evened out some of the stress that the first day of school might have caused them and since they got me those filled out sheets back the very next day I think they might be looking forward to some personalized gifts this year!

If you're interested in downloading my questions you can find it below.

First Day of School Teacher Questions_doc

Lunch Time
Just like the clothes issue, Charlotte is very opinionated on what she eats these days.  Last year I just sent her water in straw sippy cups for snack and lunch time but I figured that they probably didn't use sippy's in pre-school.  So at the end of last year I asked the director and she confirmed that most kids drank from juice boxes or juice pouches.  I didn't really want Charlotte drinking a juice box every day (plus I had visions of juice be splattered all over her outfit every day) but I couldn't come up with a better solution.

Near the end of the summer I got some of those flavored water pouches and let Charlotte try them.  She took one sip and said that she did NOT want any more of that!  I figured we were stuck with juice boxes.  But then I made the best decision, purely by accident.  I took Charlotte to the grocery store with me to pick out food for school.  As we were walking down the aisles I gave her options for crackers and dessert (she chose chocolate chip Teddy Grahams instead of chocolate chip cookies).  I also asked her if she would rather take small bottles of water to school or juice boxes.  She chose the small bottles of water!

Once we settled on bottles of water I gave her one to practice with the day before school started.  We found that as long as I untwisted the cap first she could get it on and off by herself so I made sure to do that before I put it in her lunchbox (but made sure to re-screw the lid very tight).  I also let her tell me what to pack for lunch.  This helped me figure out what she was going to want to eat the next day and also helped me avoid any meltdown moments like accidentally packing strawberries for lunch instead of blueberries (that is cause for a meltdown in our house if she's in the mood for blueberries instead!).

Since Charlotte packed her lunch with me she loves carrying it inside and loves telling me at the end of the day what she wants in her lunch tomorrow.  I'm sure this excitement won't keep either but it's helped me adjust to packing bigger lunches (they don't have a snack so she's eating everything at once) and also allowed me to gauge what she's actually going to eat and enjoy so that her teachers are (hopefully) spared any additional meltdowns over lunch!

Jitters
Charlotte is slow to warm up.  Meaning that in new situations she has to get comfortable before she is happy to play on her own and explore.  This is great once she gets used to a place -- she's totally fine with being left once she's used to it -- but the newness of things make her a little unsure.  (New things make me unsure too, I can just hide it better!)  So before school started I staked out the children's book section in my local bookstore and went searching for the perfect back to school book.  I read lots of them but I discarded all but two because I didn't want to introduce any emotions or feelings that Charlotte hadn't already expressed.  I settled on JoJo's First Day Jitters and The Berenstain Bears Go to School.

I liked these because they addressed some of the uneasiness of starting school (JoJo starts pre-school, Sister Bear starts kindergarten) but doesn't address being concerned about anything other than the newness.  And at the end both characters realize that they love school.  We read these for a few days before school started and I think they really helped.  It was helpful in giving Charlotte something to say ("jitters") to identify her feelings and helped us talk about all the fun things that she would do at school.