Top Tips For The End Of Term.

Here in Scotland, we’re coming to the end of the school year. Now that

I Home Educate my kids, so I no longer have the big unpack from school, but I do remember it well! A little bit of planning now will make the new school year much easier.

Do make sure that the bags that come back from school are fully unpacked. Lunchboxes are washed up, PE kits have gone through the wash and all school uniform has been accounted for. Have a look through the uniform and see what needs to be replaced for next year.

The biggest pile of stuff to check through will be the exercise books and other work that comes home from school. Involve your children in deciding if there is anything that they want to keep (spoiler - probably not).

I am frequently asked how I store children’s artwork and my usual reply is, “In the bin!”. Which is not to say that I always throw everything out, my kids like to keep special pieces in their rooms and I do love to be given drawings and artwork. Long term though, I only keep the ones that are very special. We’ll go into this more in the blog about tidying with children, but it has to be said that, whilst keeping a couple of bits of work is fine, random exercise books should be sent on to the next part of their lives and be recycled. With my own children, books are pretty much recycled (shredded and used as Bunny Bedding) as soon as they are finished with.

Once you’ve discarded, neatly store what you are keeping for the next school year and make a mindful shopping list of what you will need to buy for the next academic year. Then kick back and enjoy the summer (which will be more than my kids as we don’t take a long break!).