How to Ease Back to School Stress?

Change may be good, but it’s not necessarily easy. Switching from the home play fun to rules, homework, and routines can be a big jump for parents and children alike. But with a little preparation and the right attitude, it doesn’t have to be so hard. Here are some ways to get ready and motivated for a great year.

Getting Geared Up

For many families, buying new stuff is a fun way to get into the back-to-school groove. But if you’re not careful, shopping can be a budget buster. Choose new items wisely, don’t overbuy, and check with school for the required material for your kid.

School Uniform: Try to gather information from the school, what type of clothes and shoes are recommended for the kids according to the season. Try to buy clothes a week or two earlier than the first day of school, so that you can check whether they properly fit to your child. If you are giving school uniform for stitching to the tailor, make sure that he/she delivers them at least ten days earlier than the school opening day so that you can get it fit properly if the need arises. Because, sometimes they might be stitched loose or tight according to your child’s physic. Buy socks, shoes, belts and ties well in advance so that on the first day of school your child might get dressed completely. Get your children excited for the new school year with a new outfit purchased early in the back-to-school season.

School supplies: Start looking early for items you know your kids will need. Designate a box for supplies so you can stay organized as items accumulate. Let your kids select their own backpacks and other items. Before hopping into the market to buy all the school supplies research on internet where you can get a much greater range of products and varieties of all those items and buy them at the ease of sitting at home and get them delivered at your home within in time to avoid any last moment hassle.

Technology: Tech tools can be expensive. Figure out what your kids will require and prioritize accordingly. Check with the teacher to find out what types of assignments your child will be doing and what kind of computer programs and gadgets are required for him.

Academics: Teachers have different opinions on whether kids should review academics before beginning a new school year. Some opine that knowledge enriching activities such as zoo and museum visits are more significant than workbooks and written review. But most agree that it’s very much useful to take time to review last year’s curriculum and making your child practice with that. Some kids, especially young ones, enjoy math and reading worksheets. Indulge them!

Books: The most significant thing your child can do over the time  to keep his/her mind sharp is to read as much as he or she can. As you get ready for a new school year, make sure he/she has completed any required reading. If he’s having trouble with reading or pronunciation try reading the book aloud together, so that he can get confidence of reading. If your child’s school does not require students to read specific books over the time, look for enjoyable books that tie into the social studies curriculum for the next year.

Study skills: If your child struggles to meet your expectations on report cards, he might not know how to study. Each year, the schoolwork gets harder and your child will be expected to do more independent learning. Spending some time on study skills before a new school year could be a wise investment. Your child’s former or future teacher can offer suggestions based on your child’s learning style.

Keep Kids Healthy: For most kids, their daily lives are much less structured before going to school. The shift back to the school year can be hard. Take into account your kids’ personalities and habits to determine how soon you need to start easing back into the school routine.

Bedtimes: Sleeping late in the morning and watching cartoons on television late night is a sublime pleasure for kids when they don’t have to go to school. But it can bring havoc on kids’ health if they have to all of a sudden start waking up early. Consider a step-down approach, gradually getting your kids to go to bed and wake up earlier.

Getting ready for back-to-school doesn’t have to be a drag. Emphasize the new school year as a fresh start and a chance to get off on the right foot and avoid bad habits like procrastination. Keep an upbeat attitude, and your kids will feel positive and energetic, too on the first day of school.

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How to Make Your Child Ready For First Time to School?

Heading back to school takes mental preparation (for both you and your children.) Don’t worry: no need to get panic, a little planning can keep you and your kids relax on the first school day. Obviously you want to make you and your kids into back-to-school mode without chaos. With the beginning of school, parents face new organization challenges.

Get organized now for the best school year ever! Get the family organized and ready to roll for the new school year with these key tips.

• Begin early: Start getting ready for back to school at least four weeks before the first bell rings. Go ahead and quietly make plans for the new school year. Some tasks, for example, enrolling in activities and after-school programs, may need to be done even earlier in the summer vacations itself.
• Visit the school: Find out whether there are any new policies you need to know, such as a change in dress code or an additional school supplies. If you’re new to the school, make sure you have filled out all the required forms.
• Visit the doctor: Make sure your child is healthy and up on immunizations. Your pediatrician is also a good resource for school issues such as bedtime and television viewing time. Tell your doctor if your child struggled in school the previous year or has had recent changes in behavior or interest in learning.

• Meet the teacher: Discover when your child’s school announces classroom assignments. Most schools host an open house when parents can meet the teacher’s of the child and ask about their performance and weaknesses. Try to meet your child’s teacher before the first day of school. Let her know you would like to work together to make sure your child has a good year ahead.
• Surf around: Find out how much information your child’s school posts online. Some schools have small websites with basic information, while others have features like calendars, information on joining the parent group, and programs to track your child’s grades. Most school sites post a link to the class-wise curriculum. Go through the website and find out what your child will be learning in the coming session. If he’s going to be studying planets, you might be able to fit in a trip to the planetarium. If he’s going to be studying history, you can look for age-appropriate movies with historical themes.

• Think transportation: Will your child take the bus? Will you yourself or older sibling take him to school daily? Check the bus schedule to find out where your stop is and what time the bus is scheduled to be there. If your bus stop is at a little distance from your house, find out kids in the vicinity going to same school & arrange them to walk back home together.

• Stock up: Of course you’ll go back-to-school shopping, a task that is best done early and in small bites. Besides equipping your kids, use list provided by the school to buy all those things your child will need for going and learning in school.

• Roll back bedtimes: Teachers recommend easing kids back into the sleeping routine for the school year a few weeks before school starts. That way, your child will be refreshed in class instead of struggling to stay awake. Try moving back your child’s bedtime by 10 or 15 minutes a week until you’re back to the school-year schedule. It’s also a good idea to start waking up your kids earlier in anticipation of the new school year. The week before school reopens, plan a fun family outing that needs everyone to awake early, as if it were a school day. And also talk to him/her about the school and behaving appropriately in the school.

• Set the stage: Get the kids’ school clothes, shoes, i-cards, bags, books, notebooks, pencil box, lunch box, water bottle, art & craft accessories organized and accessible. Set up a station for backpacks, books and other things as well as a basket for school-related papers.
• Be positive: Kids groan about the start of the new school year, but often they are as ready for school to resume as you are. (Read this article which will help you to prepare your child for first time to school) Keep a positive attitude about the beginning of school even when things don’t go exactly your way. Maybe you’re dealing with incomprehensible school supplies that are hard to find. Try to make your family excited about a new school year so everyone can get off to a great start.

How to Save on Back to School Shopping

Back-to-school shopping is a fun way to get kids excited about a new school year. But buying too much in one shot can be a budget-buster for families and a stress trigger for children.

So it is suggested in the best interest of students and parents to research before making purchases two months earlier from the date school reopens. It softens the blow to your wallet and ensures that you buy only what your child really requires for their schooling. Follow­ing are the tips to save money and reduce the stress of back-to-school shopping.

Before even thinking about buying more school supplies, you have to figure out two things: what you need, and what you already have. Tackle what you need first; book shops, stationery stores and school. Further, e-commerce websites often give you list or suggest required student materials. Then, with lists in hand, scour the house to figure out which supplies you already own and what you have to buy now.

Once you’ve determined what to purchase, establish a budget and enforce it with your kids. When you plan to buy the backpack, lunchbox, sipper bottle, and binder, all with matching licensed cartoon character ( might at hefty price), it turns out  into a learning experience. You can tell your kids how exciting it would be to go to school with their favorite cartoon characters printed on their school supplies, and how they will look different among their peers. And same time also tell them the importance of studying and getting best grades so that they can still stand ahead of their peers in academic years and in life ahead.

Other tips to ease the pain of buying school supplies:

Shop Early: Most of the stores and web portals in the beginning of the school sessions offer Back-to-school products at discounted cost and sometimes in form of combo packs to entice shoppers into stores. Pick up those items you know you’ll need (lined notebooks, paper, pencils, crayons, folders, etc.), and the money you save can go toward bigger budget items.

Buy for whole year: Kids are not responsible like you. They keep missing their pencils, sharpeners and erasers so often in their schools. So it is better idea to buy some extra pieces, preferably in packs, so that you need not run to the stationery shops late in the evening after spending whole tiring day in office/ at home.

Involve your Kids while making List for Purchases: Let your child choose a few inexpensive items you know he’ll need, as well as a new lunch box and backpack if last year’s models just won’t do. To save time and money, consider picking up the rest of the items on the school supply list without your child.

Check for the best prices and Discounts: When you have done whole of your budgeting and listing of the items you have to buy for your kids, research on the websites, you might find it more beneficial, as  shopping online will help you save both money and time than to hop into the local school supply stores. As generally in the beginning of academic year these local stores run short in supply of many articles, mostly books and you have no other option to wait till they bring in the new stock. But when you shop online it is not the case in general. You can flip to another website if one store or website is running out of stock with some particular books or items you intend to buy. And most often you get the best discounts on online stores.

One month in: The first month of school is about establishing a daily schedule and morning routine. Invest in supplies that will help your child get orga­nized. For example, laminate a morning schedule and post it where he can’t miss it.

Two months in: Create a homework station and stock it with the necessary supplies. Consider a laminated homework schedule with built-in breaks. Make the station an inspirational place for your child, reflective of his personality.

The back-to-school shopping season often takes on the frantic pace of the weeks before the start of the academic sessions in April. By making your purchases over a few days earlier, you can make more thoughtful decisions and give you and your child time to figure out the tools he needs to do his best and be happy in school.

How to Teach Children Effective Time Management?

Too often kids and parents feel dissatisfied and disillusioned in the educational process. Parents might get frustrated in their efforts to help their children succeed, whereas a child might get frustrated getting up to his parent’s expectations. Now the question arises, how can parents help their children to be successful and find joy in learning? Parents can help their children thrive in school, and in life, by having pragmatic expectations of their children’s abilities and by helping them to develop independent work habits.

Working successfully with a child on school assignment needs understanding of the child’s developmental abilities. It is quite usual for parents to expect a child to remain quiet and still while doing learning activities, but research has proven that brains function better when movement is part of the learning process. Most children require some movement every fifteen or twenty minutes or so to concentrate. Making movement, a part of the activity is an immense way to inspire most advantageous learning and also interest and joy in learning.

If parents try to put movement into the activity and had also made an attempt to capitalize upon child’s natural gift for wonder and fun, they can present the activity to child as a game. By doing so he would not only have been overjoyed to practice his spelling words, he would also learn them more speedily and parents can have had a good time too. For instance, parents can keep the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in different places around the room and each time a child wrote the correct spelling of a word, he would have been allowed to get a piece of the puzzle. When all of the pieces were collected this way, he could put the puzzle together. The time he would spend assembling the puzzle would not only be his reward for learning and writing the correct spelling, it would be a rest break for him before starting the next learning activity.

Parents can persuade child’s efforts to work without help. Most often, in their aspiration to help their child achieve good education and relatively best scoring in the schools, parents set the bar too high, anticipating more from their children than their capability is reasonable under the circumstances. If expectations are unrealistic, children practice failure more than they carry out success. They learn to avoid learning lessons rather than to take pleasure in their achievements. Parents can easily help children to draw a plan for how to learn and remember the spelling words. The plan can comprise writing each word five times while spelling it out loud as the child walked around the room, mobilizing his whole brain for learning by integrating movement into the activity. The next step in the plan could be a test of the words while the child balanced on one foot (weird as it sounds, research reasserts that students devote better attention when engaging in balancing activities). And the plan can also include a five to ten minute break (maybe to compose a puzzle) after finishing the test. Similar exercises and plans can be formulated for making children learn other things like mathematics, science or general knowledge.

Developing independent work habits sets aside a child to feel like a flourishing learner. The feeling of success advocates more focus and commitment towards the studies in the children. Parents can help their child mainly by evidently showing confidence in their ability to succeed. Children who are motivated to believe in success are much more liable to persist when the going gets sturdy. They do not become deterred by minor setbacks. They understand and find it easier to control the situation, and get over from the setbacks if any, in shorter times and they have in their educational experience.

One characteristic of independent work habit is learning effective time management skills. Helping children develop effective time management skills improves their grades and gives them the chance to spend more time with their family and friends. Parents could supervise the amount of time a child gives to each task. For instance, a mother can tell her child that he has thirty minutes to practice spelling words, and if he gets at least 90 percent in the practice test, then he can use two hours for an activity of his choice like reading story books, solving puzzles, or any sports activity, this way a child will feel rejuvenated and he will easily accept and complete the task you want him to do.

Parents can work more successfully with children by integrating movement and fun into homework activities and by formulating strategies and procedures for management of homework. When parents take a child’s leanings into consideration in teaching independent work habits to him, the environment of the home is improved and both parents and kids have fun and get pleasure in doing schoolwork and homework.

Teachers and parents both need to work together to assist children in pursuing a well-balanced lifestyle. The matter of school performance should be kept separate from other activities of a child’s life. If teachers and parents both, promote quality education, a strong sense of involvement with the kids, and encourage their performance with positive reinforcement, a well-balanced lifestyle can be maintained.

EFFECTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR STUDENTS

Every student aims at achieving their level best to perform well during their tenure of  educational studies, yet the number who knows the tactics to learn more by studying less , which can further get  them good grades is very low. These few students who make it happen successfully are not only the smarter ones; rather they are the students who accurately know how to learn things in a better way and how to get better grades by understanding them. Learning is a severe task and if you are in a class with a lot of other students, learning can also turn into a competitive job. Our wish for being at top doesn't let us feel happy with simple success in school examinations only, To a certain extent we all try to reach at the top and get best possible grades or the things we want from our life.

Any child can easily get better marks in his or her school examination by undertaking the better learning strategies that enables them to optimize their learning capacities and make the most beneficial use of their hard work / labour / energy. It is not necessary that a student should become a bookworm, in order to succeed at school. A lot of students who constantly keep in touch with their books to memorize the formulae, theories and problem solving methods often fail to get better marks in the exams. This is for the reason that they keep on trying to memorize, too many things behind the different topics and subjects, devoid of interconnecting the ideas which restricts them to learn and understand the things practically.

A student might score average marks if he or she try hard to memorize things.  However, if any student really wants to excel in his studies and to earn the highest marks in his exams, he needs to play smart and intelligent. Memorizing things is not the right procedure; instead one should try to make his or her mind active enough to make learning process simpler than, it is for the majority of the students. With better learning strategy, one can save more time and gain confidence. This will let students participate in his or her social life and to get pleasure from other streams of learning like sports and leisure activities.

Proper Learning Strategy

In lieu of putting away yourself with books like a bookworm and attempting to memorize every word of the book devoid of in reality understanding it, you need to pursue the holistic approach of learning. Rather than wasting your energies in attempting to rote memorizes everything referred in your curriculum; you should begin making association between the ideas. There are several definite strategies to learn things in a simple way.

Where to Study? The conventional or standard perception has it that one should continue with one study place, which is not right. Cognitive researchers have laid down that shifting locations for study purposes makes better retention in the students.

Focus: It is broadly assumed that one should focus strongly on a single topic, research points, contrarily, that changing the type of material studied in single sitting ensues in far better learning results than does concentrating on just one subject at a time.  Mix and match with your subjects, as if you constrict your focus of study too much, you will never develop the mental hooks that the brain requires to solve the problems.

Tests are good for learning: Tests are immense learning tool. Libraries, teachers or professors generally have copies of past tests question papers in a subject matter. Try to find them and start practicing with them, practicing in this way will give you knowledge about the type of questions asked in the examination and the pattern of examination. It will really help you solve your question paper easily and will save much of your time in examination hall.  Complicated tests are even more efficient learning tools. Researchers call this learning outcome "desirable difficulty".

Explicate hard concepts to yourself or somebody else. While trying to getting mastery over something it often helps if you explain it to somebody else, which will make the topic clearer to you.

Don't solve problems on your own for the first time, study problems that already have been solved.

Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter? The answer is yes. Being fit increases neurocognition. To do well on tests, one should always keep fit, as the saying goes “a healthy mind dwells in a healthy body.” Kids could play healthy games – puzzles, educational toys or even a twenty minute walk prior to a test will help bring up test scores.