Real Party – It’s back-to-schooltime, woo-hoo!!

I love the summer, but I love the kids going back to school even more. I decided to get a few friends together for a Back-To-School play date on Tuesday to get us back into the swing of things. I scored at the dollar store in the teacher section with school die-cuts on the walls, and a gold plastic tablecloth with red and green apple confetti (I have a tiny apple punch). No need to go overboard with decor, the devil is in the details.

10:30 to 10:40 Homeroom: the kids played while we waited for all our friends to show up.
10:40 to 10:55 Art: Magazine collages and origami pencils. Each child had four pieces of paper that were written things like “Blue” “Circles”, etc. etc. and looked for these items in magazines. I punched holes down the sides to tie them together as a book later in the party. The older kids folded origami pencils, which I found in my FamilyFun magazine.
10:55-11:00 Clean-up and snack set up
11:00-11:10 Snack time: Great ginger cat cookies from Trader Joe’s, grapes and juice boxes.
11:10-11:30 Recess: We took a nice walk around our neighborhood.
11:30-11:45 Free time and toy clean-up
11:45 Circle time – I read If You Take a Mouse To School by Laura Numeroff.
11:50ish – Pass out goodie bags and pack up for home. I stamped paper lunch bags and filled them with letter stickers, a pencil, a granola bar, crayons and a small color/shape boardbook.

Set your timer to keep everyone on track, just like in school. It’s amazing how fast time passes, especially when moms are gabbing and kids are playing.