5 Ways to Involve Kids in Back to School Prep

This post is sponsored by JCPenney Optical. #glassesforclasses

Getting your family ready to start up a new school year can be overwhelming! There are a lot of things to take care of during summer break to help your child be ready for their first day back to a new school year. Here’s just some of the things we need to accomplish in those weeks leading up to the start of school:

• Schedule eye exam
• Schedule annual well visit / physicals
• Shop for:
  • School clothes
  • New glasses
  • Supplies
  • Backpack
  • Shoes
  • Lunch & Snack supplies
• Attend Meet the Teacher
• Organize and load-up all back to school supplies
• Take 1st day of school pictures

An Important Annual Health Tradition

One of the really important steps we take before the beginning of each new school year is make sure to visit an optometrist for an updated eye exam. Poor vision can be a huge hindrance to a proper education, and kids may not even realize or express to you when they’re having problems seeing the whiteboard.

Making it a part of our back to school tradition, helps keep it a priority and not be forgotten about before school get underway. It’s much easier for us to find time in our schedule during the slower paced summer months to schedule a visit and it helps ensure we get the new glasses back in time for the first day of school!

JCPenney Optical has a great sale that includes a large selection of on-trend Back to School Glasses for Kids for just $39.99! Or, save even more with their pick 2 offer. You can select from frames including top brands such as:

• Converse
• Ray Ban
• Nicolel by Nicole Miller
• Puma
• DKNY
• Liz Claiborne
• Callaway

At JCPenney Optical you can take care of all your family eye care needs including eye exams, glasses and contact lenses, and even prescription sunglasses.

They also accept insurance coverage, so head over to check if your vision insurance works at JCPenney Optical!

With prices that low, what are you waiting for? Reframe your look for less with JCPenney Optical!

5 Ways to Involve Kids in Back to School Prep

Letting your kids help with the back to school prep, shopping, and decision making can get them invested and excited for this new chapter. It also helps to take some of the load and decision making off of your plate! Here’s 5 easy ways to get involve your kids in the back to school prep this year.

1. Let Them Express Their Own Style – There are a lot of things that come with a new school year that kids may not have a lot of say or decision making power over. But there is one area that you can let them have most (if not all) of the say! Let your child pick out the things they like best.

An important part of our new school year routine is to get an updated eye exam and prescription, as needed. If your child needs to wear glasses, letting them pick one that they feel comfortable and confident in will go a long ways towards encouraging them to wear their glasses throughout the school year.

With JCPenney Optical’s limited time Back to School Kids glasses promotion, they can have their pick from a large selection of frames and they’re all the same price – just $39.99!

You can also let them make style decisions for their new school clothes, backpacks, even school supplies!

2. Hand Over the Supplies List – Print out your school’s supplies list for your child’s grade, and let them be in charge of finding the supplies in the store, marking them off the list, and bargain shopping. We like to bring a clipboard and pen along on the shopping trip, so it’s easier for them to mark off what they’ve added to the cart as we go through the aisles.

I’ll help with suggestions like, “Do you need any lined paper?” or “Look, these pencil boxes are only $.50!” But from there, you can let your child find what they need and be responsible for making sure they have collected everything from their list.

If you have several kids to shop for, it can be easier to take just 1 or 2 at a time on a special back to school shopping date, to cut down on the chaos!

3. Give A Back to School Budget – It can be hard to hand over the reins and let your children make decisions about the back to school shopping, because they may not pick the cheapest items on the shelf. But that’s okay. Give them a set budget for school supplies and another budget for new school clothes. If they have anything extra from shopping frugally on their school supplies, they can splurge on extra clothes.

If your child chooses a couple more expensive tops then sticking to ones on sale then at least they are picking styles that they truly love and will get a lot of wear out of them. They may have a smaller wardrobe, but that’s usually a good thing!

Most importantly, you won’t have to worry or fret about over-spending on back to school supplies if you plan and budget a dollar amount available to them up front.

4. Organize Their School Purchases – When all the shopping is done, get the kids involved once again with organizing and putting away each item. They can load up their backpack with all the necessary school supplies.

That might include opening up packages to load them into a pencil box or writing their name on certain supplies. Keep in mind that some teachers use supplies as classroom supplies, rather than specifically for your child, especially for younger grades.

Your child can also help take off all the clothes takes and bring those to the laundry room so they can be washed and put away before the first day of school. That might also include finding a dedicated spot in their backpack for an extra glasses case to protect their eyewear through the school year.

5. Pick out Lunch and Snack Supplies – Finally, when the new school year is just a week or two away, it’s time to start thinking about school lunches and snacks. You can get your child involved here by helping you select snacks they like and also with repackaging supplies into classroom friendly sizes.

Hand over that bulk size bag of snack supplies and a box of snack size baggies and they can get busy portioning out snacks so they are ready to be added to the lunchbox or taken as a mid-day snack.

You can even start prepping PB&J sandwiches and freeze them! It’s super easy and they’ll thaw by lunch time in their lunchbox.

What other ways do you get your kids involved in back to school prep?