This post is part of a series on Preparing For School. The aim of this series is to provide tips on how you can get organised and support a smooth transition into school for your kids.
***
Once kids start school, they become responsible for a whole new range of items that they need every day. It is worth the effort to show children as soon as they enter school to look after their things, so they can become independently organised for school. By this I mean that they can pack their school bag with their hat, lunchbox and any other items needed for that day at school.
Tips For Helping The Kids Get Their School Gear Organised
While I have taken the photos and written this post, the real credit for these tips goes to Mr Infrastructure (my husband). Both Mr I and love things being in their place and when it comes to kids, we have worked out that if you want to have any chance of kids putting their things away, they need to know exactly where they have to go.
Mr I sees it as his personal challenge to find an efficient way to store everyday items in our house. Over the last couple of years he has placed many hooks around our house and they have really helped with getting the kids organised for school. The kids know where they have to place their essential items and their dad has set it up in a way that it easy for them to do so.
School Bags
Prior to Mr I creating our bag hooks in the laundry, we could find the kids school bags in their bedroom, at the back door, in the lounge room – anywhere they dropped it really.
School Hats, Library Bags, Hair Accessories
We have two rows of three hooks at the end of the bunk beds. This is where the kids place their hats and library bags. Now that our eldest has his own room, there was two spare hooks, so our daughter uses them to hang her school hair accessories on.
Lunch Boxes
No hooks or purpose built spot for the lunch boxes, but after hanging up their bags after school, the first thing the kids need to do is place their lunch boxes on the bench, along with any notices that they may have received.
In the morning, the kids then collect their lunch boxes from the bench to pack in their bag. If any forms needed completing from the school notices, I place them in the appropriate child’s lunch box, for them to hand in at school.
Since we have made sure the everyday school items have a home that is easily accessible by the kids, there has been significant improvement in the kids having their school gear organised. This has helped make school mornings run smoother and also made my life easier, as I am not constantly tripping over school bags and looking for library books!
How do you organise the school gear in your house?
EDIT: Thanks to Cate for reminding me that new readers might find my earlier post on school mornings helpful:
10 Tips For Organised School Mornings
10 comments...read them below or add one
Using a tip from you (for a previous post) we have a checklist of jobs that each child needs to complete each day – and this includes putting bag in the correct place and bringing lunchbox/drink bottle into the kitchen. Each child is then responsible for putting a tick in the box next to the completed task (and I pay pocket money according ot the number of tasks done!) Works brilliantly!
Thanks for reminding me about the previous post. I should have placed a link to it for new readers! I will edit it to add that in, thanks for being on the ball Cate!
I find a visual checklist really helps my girls with what they need in their bags.
We’ve got a shoe box by the front door. The girls usually drop their bags there. After school is always a challenging time for us, so I deal with after school bag clean out. But in the mornings I try to get Annie to pack her own bag. Heidi will start that next year once she starts school proper.
I can imagine after school would be a challenging time. My daughter still tires very easily, so I only have small window to work with her after school otherwise it ends in tears!
Oh how I love that I am not the only one that insists the kids take their fair share of responsibility with this.
My son (aged 5) starts school next week. He follows his elder sister, and my youngest is at kindy.
Three school bags, three lunchboxes, three drinkl bottles, three lots of notes, three library bags………arggggh!
I have been questioned by other Mums, implying that I am too “tough” on my three, for insisting that they unpack their own bags and stash them properly.
But we need this organisation for our sanity, both after school and the next morning….
I know what you mean Lucy, I have people think the same about me. I have to remind myself that encouraging independence is one of the best things that you can do for your kids, when I feel people judging.
great post!
any tips for helping them bring everything back – i wish teachers had a checklist for the younger kids. my 2 are in pep and yr 1 and it is always something. if it rains in the morning and they take an umbrella, but sunny in the afternoon, they forget to bring it home. drink bottles and hats are forever getting lost. i know they are still young so it is a learning process the 1st years of school, but any tips? i got thesee little notebooks on a bag clip this week and am going to try writing in a checklist daily, but they still have to remember to look at it in the frenzy of pack up time.
The bringing everything back thing is an issue isn’t it. I find it is really so dependent upon the make up of each child. I have one who misplaces things all the time and another who never does. A friend who a had a child that was particularly forgetful actually sewed the number 3 onto the top of her child’s school bag. The 3 was to remind them to check for 3 things, 1 hat, 2 lunch box and 3 drink bottle. She said it wasn’t perfect but worked much better than without it.
Thank you for the post. My 5 year old is in kinder so we sort of have a system in place but I know I will have to be more organised next year for 5 days a week! Bookmarking this post for future reference as I know I will come back to it in my mild panic state!
[...] bags is working well for us. You can see more about how we organise the school gear in this post Getting The School Gear Organised. Our night time routine works really well, setting us up for a clean slate each morning. You can [...]