Summertime lends itself to lazy days of going to bed late and sleeping in, but those days never last, and before you know it the first day of school will be right around the corner. School mornings can be stressful and hectic if you are not organized and prepared, however, there are strategies you can employ that will keep your mornings calm and efficient.  Start getting organized now so that the first morning of school has everyone in smiles instead of tears.  These 28 blogs will share some helpful organizational tips.

Night Before Prep

Do as much as you can the night before.  Make sure that the kids take baths or showers at night. Ask the kids to lay out their clothes, pick out what they want for lunch and anything else you can think of that will ease the chaos in the morning.  These bloggers have experienced the chaos and have come up with tips that they can share with you.

• De-Stress Your Morning Routine
• 4 Simple Parenting Habits for a Stress-Free School Day Morning
• How to Ensure a Back to School Stress-Free Morning Routine
• A Stress-Free Morning Routine for Back-to-School!
• Back-to-School Organization
• Back-to-School Tips for Busy Parents & Stress-Free Mornings
• Tips for Your First Day of School

No-Stress Breakfast Ideas

If you can, set the table for breakfast the night before.  Create a shelf in your pantry that is full of healthy breakfast choices that the kids can choose for themselves. Prep fruit the night before so that it will be ready and waiting in the refrigerator when the kids need it.  The more ways that the kids can be self-sufficient the better it is for everyone.  Check out these seven blog posts that contain more stress-free breakfast choices.

• Tips for Keeping Your Back-To-School Mornings Stress-Free
• Getting Ready for Back-to-School & a Breakfast Smoothie Recipe
• How to Beat Back-to-School Stress
• Create an Easy-to-Follow Morning Routine
• Back-to-School Fridge Organization
• Back-to-School Breakfasts {Eat Well, Spend Less}
• Easy Back-to-School Breakfast Ideas

Morning Routine Chart

Sometimes kids forget what they need to do in the morning, but you can alleviate some of that forgetfulness by creating a morning routine chart that lists everything that needs done before leaving for school. These seven blogs have all sorts of ideas for morning routine charts that are sure to make your mornings easier.

• How to Make Your Own Printable Morning Routine Chart
• Back-to-School Organizing: Establishing a Morning Schedule
• 5 Easy Tips for Back-to-School Success
• Kids Back-to-School Morning Routine
• Back-to-School A Morning Routine Chart
• Morning Routine Organization
• {Back-to-School} My Biggest Sanity Saver is Our Morning, Afternoon and Evening Routine Charts

Create a Backpack Station

A backpack station is a place where your kids can hang their backpacks when they get home at night.  All homework is removed and can be placed in a special place depending on how you organize your backpack station.  Once homework is done and you’ve checked it, the kids can put everything for the next day back into their backpacks.  When it’s time to go to school in the morning you will know exactly where the homework and the backpacks are, so there will be no last minute panic looking for something.  Take a look at these seven blog articles, which explain how to create your own backpack station to keep your kids and home organized.

• Reduce Back-to-School Stress Starting Now
• Back-to-School Prep: For Moms and Kids
• Five Organizing Tips for Back-to-School
• Putting Together a Backpack Station
• DIY Chalkboard Backpack Station
• Backpack Station
• Our Backpack Station & a New Favorite App

You and your child have managed to survive and hopefully thrive during the elementary school years, which makes the next big hurdle to tackle middle school. Along with that transition will come new challenges, opportunities and potential problems. If you’re wondering what you and your child may encounter and how to deal with it, check out these 20 blog posts.

Challenges of Homework

The increase in homework in middle school can be very stressful for a new 6^th grader.  Make sure that your child has a designated time and place to do his homework.  Work with your child on his time management skills so that he can keep up with the assignments that he has and complete them on time.  These five blog entries explore different tips to help your child with homework.

• Tips for Helping Middle Schoolers Manage Homework To promote homework success, designate a specific time every day to do homework and set aside a quiet place for your child to work.
• Back to School: 7 Tips for Parents of Middle School Students Support your child’s budding independence by reminding them about the homework they need to do without badgering them.
• Tips to Help Your Children with Homework: Middle School Help your child learn how to manage his time by encouraging him to say no to time-draining activities.
• Homework Tips for Parents … Help Your Kids Make the Grade Make sure that you tell your kids that, while grades are important, putting in the effort is a big part of success.
• 8 Tips to Ease Homework Time Stress Break down big assignments into three to 10 parts, depending on the size of the assignment, and add it to the daily workload.

Getting Organized

Many times middle schoolers will have trouble keeping up with worksheets, notebooks and other assignments.  When your child sits down to start his homework he needs to have the supplies as well as the correct text book and schoolwork to complete the assignment.  In these five blog articles you can read about tips to help your middle schooler get and stay organized.  These skills will not only help your child in middle school, but will continue to help him in high school and beyond.

• Organizing Your New Middle-Schooler Help your child find and label all of his notebooks and folders, hang a dry erase calendar in his room and go through his backpack daily so that he stays organized.
• Keep Your Middle Schooler Organized Several different strategies are outlined in this post that can help your child keep up with assignments and get them turned in on time.
• The Other Transition: Elementary to Middle School Tips Get your child an assignment book or planner to help keep track of assignments.
• Tips to Prepare for the Middle School Transition Watch this video to learn tips for how to help your child not get lost and to plan for additional homework.
• Tips for Starting Middle School Set up a filing system at home to keep completed assignments, that way when it comes time for end of term tests you can find all of your work.

Bullying

All kids will probably experience some sort of bullying in their life, but how they react to it is what will make the difference.  Ignoring a bully is often the advice given, and in some cases it might work, but your child needs to know that whatever the bully is doing is not acceptable.  If kids don’t tolerate the actions of a bully, the bully will be forced to stop bullying.  For more tips on dealing with a bully, read these five blog posts.

• Advice for New Middle School Students This advice comes from a 9^th grader who encourages students to be kind to each other and to not worry about popularity.
• 8 Tips to Helping Middle School Students Deal with Bullying Listen to your kids and address concerns of bullying right away to help your child deal with the problem.
• Real Student Tips on What 6^th Graders Should Know to Rule the School When someone bullies you just ignore them; reacting will only entice them to continue.
• Tips for Dealing with Bullies Travel with a group; most bullies won’t say anything when you’re surrounded by friends.
• Melvindale: Anti-Bullying Expert Gives Tips to Allendale Middle School Instead of just ignoring a bully, tell them with your words that how they are treating you is not okay.

Internet Safety

Now that your child is in middle school he will be using the Internet more for school work and for socializing with his friends. Internet safety is a huge concern these days.  Make sure that your child knows what your rules are for using the Internet.  Keep the computer in a public area of your home so that you can walk by and see what your child is doing at any time.  To learn more tips for keeping your child safe on the Internet, check out these five blog articles.

• Students Get Tips on Internet Safety Once a picture is posted on the internet, it is there forever. Make sure your kids know they need to be careful what they’re posting online.
• Internet Safety Tips for Middle Schoolers by a Middle Schooler This student gives tips to keep middle schoolers safe, like not giving out personal information on the Internet.
• Internet Safety for Your Middle Schooler Take a quiz on My Space Safety and then have your middle schooler take it to make sure that he understands privacy issues online.
• Internet Safety Guidelines for Middle Schoolers Watch these videos with your kids about what they should not post on the Internet.
• Internet Safety for Middle School Kids Go over guidelines with your kids about what sites they should and should not be going to.