Back to School Crafts: A Creative Start to the Year

Making back to school crafts with your child is a great way to help them get excited about returning to the classroom after the lazy fun of summer. Kids are often apprehensive or nervous about starting school, especially if they’ll be in a new environment with a new teacher or a different group of classmates.  Making back to school crafts can help your child build confidence and feel prepared for the start of the year, and helps make the start of school something to look forward to rather than worry about.  You can get started with these three simple, inexpensive projects.

Make a countdown calendar together that gives a new reason every day to get excited about the start of school.  Turn a run-of-the-mill backpack into a special reflection of your kid’s unique personality.  Create unique pencils for every class in the day.  Back to school crafts are easy on your wallet, and give you and your son or daughter the opportunity to spend some quality time together in the precious last days of summer.

A Countdown Calendar

The countdown calendar is one of the easiest back to school crafts to make, and it’s a great opportunity to let your kid’s creativity run wild.  All you need is some construction paper, a stapler, and colorful crayons or markers.  Take one sheet of paper for every day between now and the day that school starts, and mark the number of days left on a corner of the page.  Then, it’s time to have some fun!

Decorate the pages with drawings, stories about fun things that happened in school last year, or reasons why school is cool.  Try decorating a few pages yourself without letting your child see— that way, when they discover them later, it’ll be a complete surprise! A countdown calendar is one of the most special back to school crafts, because it gives your kid a daily, handmade reminder of your bond.