10 Sep 5 Ways Homeschoolers Can Enjoy Back to School
As the new school year approaches, the excitement and anticipation can be palpable, especially for homeschool families. Embracing the back-to-school season offers a unique opportunity to set a positive tone for the year ahead. Whether you’re looking to establish memorable traditions, refresh your learning environment, or simply find ways to make the start of the year special, there’s no shortage of creative ideas to explore. In this blog post, we’ll merge some fun and practical tips to help you kick off your homeschooling year with enthusiasm. Plus, don’t miss our free printable resource designed to capture those first-day-of-school moments in a meaningful way!
Back to School / First Day of School Ideas For Homeschoolers
- Create a Unique “First Day” Tradition.
It can be fun to do something special on your first day of homeschooling each year. Here are some ideas of what you can do:
- Have a special breakfast that you make together at home or go to a nearby restaurant.
- Give the kids each a gift – which can include new school supplies and items, if you want, but can be something not officially school related, too!
- Have a family game day. Pull out a new or favourite board or video game and spend the day playing together.
- Go on a field trip. The first few weeks of school are the BEST time to hit up attractions or playgrounds or other activities in your community that normally are flooded with kids. Since schools aren’t starting their field trips yet – these places tend to be quiet early in the school year, meaning that you can enjoy them with your kids without the madness of crowds.
- Have a “Not Back-to-School Celebration!”
Many local, in-person homeschooling communities have special events that they plan. Typically, this is a meetup at a park or community centre for a picnic or special day where kids and parents can just get together to just connect and have fun for the day. Take a look at your local groups to see what’s going on near you.
- Decorate Your Homeschool Space.
Get your kids involved in planning out a way to make your learning spaces more organized and inviting for them. This could mean that you build out a reading or quiet nook, put up posters or a map, or even create a fun bulletin board. It could also mean that your kids help you clean out their bins of work from last year and help put together the resources they will be using this year. Or it could be that today, you turn your living room into a party zone with balloons and streamers. Get the kids involved in kicking the year off with a blast.
- Take Advantage of School Supply Sales.
Cheap school and office supplies. Who could ask for a better day than that?! Please tell me that I’m not the only one who gets a bit giddy as I skip down the aisles stocking up on 10¢ packages of lined paper and 25¢ pencil bundles! When the school season kicks off, all kinds of school supplies are even lower than they are the week before, so pop into your local store and grab whatever you need! I probably won’t need to buy another pack of paper for 15 years…. but that won’t stop me from checking out what else is on sale! This is when I’ve managed to get a great deal on an ecotank printer, laptops or computers, a laminator, and more. So take a look to see what’s out there!
- Take the “First Day of Homeschool” pictures.
Homeschoolers can do the typical stand-at-the-front-door with a sign picture to show off their new year too! Fill in a first day of school sign with details about what grade they are going into, what they want to be when they grow up, names of best friends, their interests – or whatever else you want the sign to say! I used to just do grade and year.
Our children’s school years go quickly – racing ahead at the speed of life, and even if we don’t have our kids in the school system, documenting this is important.
So today, I’m excited to share with you A School Days Treasury, which is a free printable collection of papers designed to help record these memories.
FREE PRINTABLE SCHOOL DAYS SIGNS & RECORDS
For both families who homeschool and families with kids in school, this collection has pages for grades Kindergarten through 8. Each grade level includes a:
- page to print for a first day of (home)school photo
- a summary of the year – with 2 editions, one with a space for a teacher & school name and the other without those spaces
- an interview sheet for the start of the year to watch how your child’s answers change year by year
- a year-in-review page, where you can record all the things done in the year
You can use these sheets as covers and the contents of a binder, folder, or bin designated for your child’s school year. Save things to help create memories – awards, artwork, special projects, samples of schoolwork, tickets from field trip locations, etc. These are so much fun to look through when your child is older.
>> DOWNLOAD THIS SCHOOL DAYS TREASURY PACK!
How Other Homeschoolers Handle The New School Season
This post was originally posted in 2015 to feature some blog posts by other Canadian homeschooling families with their experiences and wisdom regarding the new school year. The above post was updated in 2024.
Joelle – Setting Goals for the School Year
Why setting up goals? They help you keep on track, and they help you measure your progress as the year progresses.
Bonnie – 10 School Life Movies
Growing up as a homeschool student, my glimpses of “real” school life consisted of hearing what my friends said about it or watching movies about school kids. Good plots require problems, so most movies about school focus on the bad things that happen there—the bullying, peer pressure, and cliques (making me glad that I was homeschooled).
Alison – Celebrating the First Day of School
We’re trying to catch some of that New Year of School excitement this year!
Alexandra – Easing Into It!
Over the last 10 years that I have homeschooled my children, we have always eased slowly into the new homeschool year. We focus on the main subjects at first, Math and Language Arts, and each week or two, add more to our routine.
Krina – How to “Not” Go Back to School
As a publicly schooled child, then public teacher, I am quite familiar with the way school works in a public setting. I have been known to compare our “schooling” to my knowledge of public schooling, and to feel like I am failing the comparison. But if I stop, breathe, and look around me – I see that this isn’t “school” but rather my family learning together, through all these seasons. I see that our choice to follow this lifestyle is working for us – and for them. It is apples and oranges – both are food delivered via different sources.
Andrea – How To Kick Off The New Year
So what can you the reader get out of this quick blog? HAVE FUN! Don’t let yourself get bogged down with all the nitty gritty details of “school”.
Kimberly – Don’t Put too Much Pressure on Your First Day of Homeschool
If you haven’t already started your first day of homeschool this year, you likely will be in the next week or so. My advice? Don’t put too much pressure on your first day.
Lisa Marie Fletcher is a mom of 5 with 15+ years of homeschooling experience. She started The Canadian Homeschooler in 2010 as a way to support the homeschooling community in Canada.