7 Ways to Start the School Year Right

7 Ways to Start the School Year

By Janeen Lewis

Right

CHOOL BELLS WILL SOON BE

SRINGING, and while that means no more sleeping in or lazy days at the pool, welcoming structure and routine back into family life helps get kids who are reluctant to return to school more motivated to go. With a positive attitude and a few back-to-school motivators, even reluctant school goers can start the school year off right. And getting off on the right foot paves the way for school success for the entire year.

1Reintroduce routines

It’s easy to get off schedule during the summer when longer days beckon kids outside late and sleeping in is easy to do. Introduce routines for going to bed and waking up before school starts because it may take children a few days to adjust. Read a book together as a family to simulate academic routine before daily homework starts. If you have tweens or teens that have been staying up late, take their bed time back 15 minutes every night until you get to the desired bedtime so it isn’t too much of a shock to kids’ sleep cycles.

2Get organized

Organize those areas that you will use for school preparations. Make a place for lunch and breakfast items in the refrigerator and pantry so they will be ready to go when making lunches or breakfast. Restock home desk supplies and prep study areas. Organize your laundry room with baskets for school uniforms, sports uniforms, and individual kid’s clothes. Don’t overlook your vehicle. Keep a basket with all the things you might need for those busy hectic drives between school, work and after-school activities.

3Purge last year’s items

Go through backpacks and closets and get rid of anything that is outgrown or worn out. Sell the nicest items at consignment stores or a yard sale, and save what you make to put toward new items this school year.

If your child has a hard time letting go of items even though they are worn out or do not fit, try putting them in storage for a month or two, then bring them back out. I have done this with my own kids, and usually they are willing to give up the items when they realize they have not missed them.

Help your child set a goal for the school year, or set a family goal together...setting goals can motivate kids and families to have an amazing school year.

6Set goals

Help your child set a goal for the school year, or set a family goal together. Maybe your child wants to ace pre-algebra, start a kid blog or read more books than they read last year. Or maybe he or she wants to kick more goals in soccer this year or nail that back handspring they have been working on in gymnastics. As a family, maybe you want to volunteer together at school or raise money for a worthy cause in the community. Setting goals can motivate kids and families to have an amazing school year.

7Celebrate with back-toschool traditions.

It can be simple, like snapping a morning photo shoot before the first day of school, or elaborate, like hosting a neighborhood back-to-school bash at your house. Have a family meal at your favorite restaurant after the first day or plan a special weekend getaway before homework and sporting events kick in. Whatever you choose, model an upbeat attitude about the start of a new school year, and chances are your child will too. 

4Devise a shopping strategy

After you have purged your home of old items, it is fun to replace them. Sometimes kids get excited about returning to school because they get new clothes and supplies.

Check out all the sales flyers and compare prices for the things your child needs. Make a shopping list of needed school supplies, clothing items and any organizing tools you might need for closets.

If your school has already sent a supply list, you can shop early and avoid the crowds and out-of-stock items. Sometimes I even shop late in the evening for school supplies when the aisles are less crowded so I can look carefully for what my kids need. The more you plan, the more you can do in one trip. You might even make it a special day out with kids.

5Attend school orientations

Sneak-a-peek. Back-to-School Night. Readyfest. They are called a variety of names, but back-toschool orientations are another way to create a desire to go back to school. Students can meet their teacher, check out their classroom and see friends they haven’t seen all summer. This can make students previously hesitant to return to school eager to get started.

Janeen Lewis is a writer, elementary teacher and mom. She has been published in several parenting publications across the country and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teacher Tales.

Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort

After two years of lockdown, a 7- and 11-year-old reintroduce their parents to the world.

By Calvin Hennick Photos courtesy of Beaches Turks & Caicos

My wife and I are normally

pretty independent travelers, but the pandemic put us out of practice. So, for our first trip in two years, we took our kids to Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort, where everything we wanted would be in one place.

Or, in a way, our kids took us.

My wife and I did the packing. (Fine, I confess, it was mostly my wife.) But it was our children who came home from school every day and fired up YouTube to watch videos about the resort. “Oooh, Dad!” our 7-year-old daughter Eloise would say. “I want to drink hot chocolate and eat pastries at Café de Paris! And we need to check out the surfing simulator! And you can get cotton candy every day! And there’s

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Type the words “beautiful beach” into Google Images, and the results are going to look a whole lot like your vacation to Turks & Caicos.

a place where you can bring a white shirt and tie dye it any color you want!”

Our son Nile, who turned 11 during the trip, had more modest ambitions. “I only want to do two things,” he announced after watching hours of content about surf and sun. “Lie in a hammock and eat jerk chicken.”

We all did a lot more than that. Here’s how it went.

The Beach

I’m tempted to leave a one-word review here: “Perfect.”

Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort sits on Grace Bay Beach, which routinely earns spots on lists ranking the best beaches in the world. It’s easy to see why. The sand is white. The water is warm and calm and a brilliant turquoise. The sun is almost always out. Type the words “beautiful beach” into Google Images, and the results are going to look a whole lot like your vacation to Turks & Caicos.

“It’s not like the beaches in Massachusetts,” Eloise said, casting a bit of shade on her home state’s shoreline. “The sand at the resort was almost fluffy. But the sand in Massachusetts is dirty and rocky and full of little sticks that hurt your feet.”

Harsh but true, Eloise!

Nile couldn’t get enough of the water. Now that he’s officially a tween, he poses carefully for most photographs, only letting his lips curl into the slightest smile. But in all of our photos at the beach, he has a big, toothy grin affixed to his face.

If the beach is why you’re here (and after all, it’s right there in the resort’s name), you’re not going to be disappointed.

The Food

The dining options at Beaches blew us away.

We’ve done a handful of cruises and all-inclusive resorts before, and I usually temper my expectations when it comes to the food. But here, we were genuinely impressed. Depending on how you count, there are around two dozen restaurants on the property, and we found ourselves making tough decisions about whether to try something new or go back to a place we loved.

At Nile’s request, we started with the Jerk Shack, which sits on the beach at the very edge of the resort. We all got heaping platefuls of jerk chicken, except for my wife, who ordered fish in foil. “It was delicious,” Nile told me when I asked him to provide a review. “I want more!”

Me too, bud.

The first night, we got reservations at Kimonos, the resort’s Teppanyaki-style Japanese restaurant. Nile winced at the oil-fueled fireballs that the chefs made when they fired up the grill, but soon he was happily (if unsuccessfully) using his mouth to try to catch food that our chef, Chris, launched across the table with her steel spatula.

And Eloise giggled as Chris belted out popular tunes, changing the lyrics to include as many references as possible to fried rice.

That was one of the great things about our trip. We’d barely eaten in a restaurant for more than two years, and I don’t think we’ve ever taken the kids to a Japanese place. But we were able to have a bunch of new experiences – and create new memories – with them, all in one place.

During our four days at Beaches, we celebrated Nile’s birthday with steak and seafood, sampled Indian dishes and sushi, ate pizza by the pool, and piled our plates with ribs at the buffet. I personally wolfed down more late-night fries and milkshakes than I’d care to admit from the ’50s-style burger joint Bobby Dee’s. And Eloise definitely ate her fair share of cotton candy.

Pirates Island

I’m sure each of my children could write an in-depth review of the resort’s water park, called Pirates Island. They certainly spent enough time there!

Nile’s favorite feature was the lazy river, which winds its way through caves and little waterfalls. Eloise was a huge fan of the surfing simulator. Neither of us was brave enough to stand up on a board, but in the afternoons, the feature is restricted to body boarding. It was a lot of fun to swerve and jostle with her in the endless waves.

The water slides in the park were surprisingly exciting, too. Eloise’s favorite was a tube slide that spins you in swirl after swirl, but it made me motion sick. She was also a big fan of the water park’s swim-up bar with its own special frozen drink menu for kids. I think she felt grown-up, sipping her virgin strawberry daquiri in her swimsuit and sunglasses.

I’d sort of forgotten how much kids love to be in the water. Pirates Island reminded me. And I’ll admit that I enjoyed it, too (even if, by Day 4, I largely gave up the water slides in favor of the hot tub).

Activities & Excursions

Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort offers free water sports, and we took out both aqua-cycle trikes and a small sailboat (manned by a resort staffer) one sunny morning. There were also stand-up paddle boards and kayaks available, but we were too lazy to give them a whirl.

Eloise did get in her tie die experience, and Nile camped out in the resort’s Xbox lounge for as long as we’d let him, playing racing video games. “The Xbox lounge was fun, and you get to play as long as you want,”

he said. “Until your mom drags you out, at least!” While Nile played Xbox, Eloise was usually in the nearby game room, making new friends and playing ping pong, billiards, and air hockey.

Both kids were too old for the Sesame Street camp and activities, but we did catch a character parade the night of the resort’s beach party. I snagged a selfie with The Count and posted it to social media with the caption: “All the celebs are out at Grace Bay Beach tonight!” (Is it even really a family vacation if Dad doesn’t embarrass the kids a little bit?)

We only left the resort once, for a catamaran cruise and snorkeling trip that left from the resort’s main dock. Out at the reef, the water was a little rocky, and my wife (not a strong swimmer) tapped out of snorkeling almost immediately, leaving me to try to steer the kids through the chop by their life jackets. We had more fun during our stop at Iguana Island (home not only to the namesake lizards, but also to a vacant, gorgeous beach) and on the catamaran itself – which the DJ and bartender turned into a floating party, complete with a water slide off the back of the boat.

The Resort

Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort is just big enough to allow for some exploring, without being overwhelming. We stayed in a two-bedroom suite in the “Key West” village – one of five distinct villages at the property – and we could get to the far end of the resort on foot in ten minutes or so. (There are also golf cart rides available for those with mobility limitations – or with kids who just want to ride in a golf cart!)

The property is meticulously manicured (for the first two days, I thought the grass was fake), and every time we turned a corner, there was something new the kids wanted to check out – the giant lawn chess set, the tennis court, and yes, plenty of hammocks for Nile to lounge in. Each village has its own pool, and our favorite was the large one in the centrally located Italian Village.

Some of our favorite moments were simply walking around the property at night. We’d find a quiet spot to sit near the beach or one of the pools, taking goofy selfies and just enjoying one the time with one another. After two years of lockdown, we’d had plenty of each other’s company. But trust me: It’s better by the beach. 

Calvin Hennick is the author of the memoir Once More to the Rodeo, one of Amazon’s “100 Best Books” of 2019.