A small back to school party at home: a letter to your future self in a time capsule, a countdown balloon cut and release, a paper mache good luck character, star sandwiches, wafer pencils and white iced butter cookies on bus shaped platters, and yellow school bus favor boxes with a toy bus, play dough and a printable countdown.
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The week before school starts has a particular feeling in our house. Everyone is a little excited and a little nervous and nobody wants to say which one out loud.
So we throw a tiny party. Not a big production, just the cousins and two friends around the kitchen table, one afternoon, with three activities and a table of food shaped like school things.
It turns the last-week nerves into something to look forward to, and every child goes home with a box that keeps the countdown going until the first morning.
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Everything on the table is shaped like something from a school day, and every dish gets a mini chalkboard sign in front of it so the children can walk down the table and read what they are about to eat.
Star shaped sandwiches cut with a cookie cutter, round butter cookies with a smooth white icing top, apple slices, and pencil treats: take a long wafer stick, cut one end at an angle so it looks sharpened, dip that tip in white chocolate and then just the very point in dark chocolate. Dip the other end in white chocolate coloured pink with a little freeze dried strawberry or food colouring, and that is the eraser.
Serve it on yellow school bus shaped paper platters with a tall stack of back to school plates at one end, and a cluster of red, yellow and green back to school balloons behind the table. That is the whole decoration.
Give every child a sheet of paper and a pencil and ask them to write a letter to themselves for the end of the year. What they hope to learn, who they hope to sit next to, something they are a bit worried about, how tall they think they will be.
Younger children draw instead of writing, or dictate a sentence for you to write at the bottom.
Fold them, put them all in the time capsule, tape it shut, write the opening date on the lid and put it somewhere visible. We keep ours on the shelf by the front door all year, and open it on the last day of school.
Before the children arrive, tie a helium balloon to a length of red ribbon and tie the ribbon to the back of a chair, one chair per child, spaced out across the garden.
Each child stands at their chair with a pair of scissors. Everyone counts down from ten together, and on zero they cut the ribbon and all the balloons go up at once.
It takes four seconds and it is the moment they talk about afterwards. Cut the ribbon low so the piece left tied to the chair is short, and do this one outside, away from trees and power lines.
This is the messy one and the one that lasts. Together you mix a magic potion in a big bowl that turns into a character who will look after the child all year.
Fill a large bowl with shredded paper, as white as possible so the figure can be painted afterwards, or torn up egg cartons. Add a cup of warm water and a squeeze of dish soap, which stops the pulp fermenting and smelling and keeps insects away for much longer. Mix until the paper is damp but not dripping, adding water as needed.
Now add white glue, one cup at a time, until the paper turns into a clay you can shape. The rough guide is 2 cups of packed shredded paper to 1.5 cups of white glue, or roughly equal parts by eye.
Shape a moon, a star, or whatever their imagination produces. A moon and a star are the easiest shapes for small hands and the nicest to keep beside a bed. Let them dry for a day or two on newspaper, then paint them.
Once the figures are completely dry, out come the poster paints. A yellow moon and a blue star are what mine chose, and they sat on the shelf above their beds all year.
Send them home wrapped in a tea towel if they are still slightly damp, and tell the children to finish painting at home. That is a second afternoon of quiet for the other parents, and they will thank you.
Each child goes home with a yellow school bus shaped gable box holding three things: a little plastic toy school bus, a mini tub of play dough with a printed page of school themed things to build with it, letters, pencils, a bus, a backpack, and the double sided printable countdown bus you can download below.
The countdown works like this. Print the page double sided, flipping on the short edge, and fold along the dotted line so the bus stands up on the table. Cut out the ten animals from the back of the page. Ten days before school starts you glue one animal into a window every day, and each morning you count together how many windows are still empty. When the last animal climbs on, school starts tomorrow.
Slip a printed copy of the page into every favor box with the animals still uncut, so each family can start their own countdown at home. The instructions are printed right on the page, so nobody has to remember what you told them at the door.
Bake a cake the night before the first day of school and leave it waiting at home, covered, on the counter.
They walk back in through the door after the longest day of the year, and there it is. It says welcome back better than any question about how the day went.
Want more? Browse all our free printables for kids.
Do the paper mache first, while everyone is still clean and calm, so the figures have the whole party to start drying. Put the balloon release last, it is the natural ending, and the children leave holding their favor box on a high.
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