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School mornings are the worst especially if you’re not a morning person like me. They’re brutal on me because I normally go to bed later than recommended. That’s when I get my best content ideas.
Nevertheless, I find that school morning routines only become harder if you’re not prepared. The less prepared you are, the more likely you’ll end up dropping your son/ daughter to school hella late.
And I know you don’t want that.
Why You Need These School Morning Hacks
You don’t want to wake up in a frenzy wondering what to do, what not to do and how to get it done in under an hour.
And finally, you don’t want to drop your kids in your PJs.
I’m guilty of doing it. It’s not treason I’m commiting anyway. But its kinda nice to show up looking put together instead of showing up at your kids school in a messy bun and flipflops.
What You’ll get In This Post
I have created this post to help you ensure all those things I’ve just mentioned above happen less occasionally.
In this post I’ll go over
- The simple hacks that will make your school mornings smoother than what they are right now.
Lets jump in
9 Hacks to Make your School Mornings Easier
Now these hacks will be time saving and life saving especially if you have no help around the house like myself. If you’re a single mom, they will be absolute gold mines.
And if your spouse helps you prep the kids for school, then these hacks will release the pressure on you and your spouse.
Essentially allowing you to sleep in a little more.
Prepare School Clothes the Night Before
My child wear a school uniform when going to school. I know most moms here though have their kids enrolled in schools where they wear regular clothes to school.
But either way, even if your child goes to school with regular clothes, simply having those clothes ironed and ready to go is going to save you a ton of time.
Now, you won’t have to spend at least 10-20 minutes looking for clothes that match and make you’re child look presentable.
After all, your child is a representation of you outside there. If they don’t look out together, it’s a bad look on you as the mom – I know the pressure.
Don’t leave out the shoes in your school clothes prep.
Now in my child’s school, they have specific type of shoes they wear to school. They’re called toughee shoes. They’re all black and always need to be polished.
So i will normally polish these shoes an hour after I pick him from school.
That way I don’t have to worry about polishing them in the morning.
It takes one task away from the huge number of things that I have to do in the morning.
Prep their packed school break/ lunch the night before
This is highly dependent on what meals you pack for your child. And whether or not you pack lunch for your kid.
For me, I don’t pack any school lunch as the school provides and it is calculated along with the school fees.
But I do have to pack break which consists of snacks, water or juice depending on the weather.
They normally have their break at 10 so you don’t have to pack anything heavy. Just small bites that can get them through 3 hours of sitting until they can have their lunch at 1pm.
If you’re packing lunch, it is best to pack it at night and refrigerate it to keep it fresh. Then in the morning, reheat it and pack it in their bags.
If they’re just snacks you can easily just pick and go as the snacks already come in their little packets.
if you’re like me and you like going the extra mile with the snacks or you want your child to eat healthy snacks at school. You can easily prep them the night before and then pack them in the morning.
That will save you an extra 15-20 minutes in the morning.
Clean out the Kitchen After Dinner
This is an occasional to do list on my cleaning schedule for busy moms.
And because I cannot cook anything in a dirty kitchen. I prefer to leave it clean so that when I want to make breakfast in the morning for my kiddo, I don’t waste time cleaning the dishes. I jump straight into making breakfast and everything moves faster.
Bathe the Kids in the Evening
Im not entirely sure if there’s a mama who advocates for morning bathes for her kids during a school morning. But if there is, I thought it wise to leave this little hack on here.
Bathing kids at night not only helps them relax and fall asleep faster but it also ensures that you don’t have to bathe them in the morning.
All they need to do is get up, brush their teeth and change into their school clothes.
It’s less stressful and makes a school morning easier to navigate.
Doing Homework in the Evening
The number of times I have had to learn the hard way that homeworks need to be done in the evening right after my child gets back from school are countless.
And not just done but finished all the way through.
My son has this thing where he jumps questions that are hard for him so that he can ask me later on.
And more often than not, he will forget and remember about it on the school morning.
That basically means that I will have to sit down to help him do that one question he didn’t understand for approximately 30 minutes.
And we always get late when this happens.
So instead of doing his homework in the morning I make it a point to sign his diary.
Now, for me to sign his school diary, I need to ascertain that he has finished his homework.
That will force me to check his homework and ask him If he needs any help with his homework in the evening.
So by the time we go to bed I’m sure his homework is completely done.
That rule also applies to Friday homework. All the homework he is given for the weekend is done on Friday evening.
That way, I don’t forget because of all the mom-son fun activities we do over the weekend.
Wake Up Before Your Kids
You remember at the beginning of this post when I was talking about looking out together when dropping your kids to school. Well, this is how you do it.
For examole, if your kids need to get to school by 8am, then you need to be up at 6am to get yourself ready. Then you can wake your kids up at 6:30 am… So that you can be out of the house by 7:30am.
Also, the time you wake up will be dependent on how long it takes for you to get ready. If you prepared the clothes you’re going to wear the night before. How long it takes you to prepare your kids to school and how far your kids school is at from where you stay. And if they’re licked by the bus, what time the bus normally arrives at your place.
For example. My son’s school is 10 minutes away from where we stay. It takes me 30 minutes to get him ready for school (changing clothes, brushing, combing hair, preparing breakfast and packing lunch). I take 30-45 minutes to get myself ready. And he needs to be in school by 8am.
That typically means that I have to wake up at 6am so that I’m ready by 6:45am. Prepare my to do list for the day for 15 minutes. Then I wake him up and prepare breakfast for 30 minutes. That puts us at 7:30am. And then take him to school. So he typically gets to school at 7:40 and latest 7:50am if I take time on my to do list.
Prepare Breakfast as your Child Dresses Up
You’ll notice in my schedule on the previous point, that I didn’t mention changing my sons clothes.
He is 7 years old and can do that on his own now.
When he was younger my schedule looked very different because I was doing everything for him. From waking him up to brushing his teeth up to putting on his shoes.
But now, I have the luxury of preparing breakfast while he gets himself ready. He can pretty much do everything for himself.
And that saves a ton of time during a school morning. So if you have older kids, this tip will help you.
If you don’t have younger kids, take that extra time you have before you wake them up to pretty much prepare everything.
So if it takes you an hour to get yourself ready and 30 minutes to prep, then wake up 1hr 30 minutes before.
For example, my school morning prep for my son when he was 4 years was warm his orange juice, make my tea and put it in a flask. Make his breakfast and leave it in the microwave for warming and pack his break and the extra clothes Incase of a Pee-pee accident.
Doing all those things before waking him up kept the school mornings less chaotic and much more fun because it gave us ample time to bond, dance a little and have breakfast together.
Double Check Everything
There are a gazillion times where i found myself rushing back to the house to get the bottle of water or my son’s homework or his pencil…. It was always something.
Until i decided I didn’t want to be the gazelle mom – the one who is always running around like a crazy person with a bunch of things on their hands.
So I have a checklist that is plastered in my kitchen that has all the things that he carries to school. And I created a game called the check game.
Its basically me calling out the names on the list out loud and him checking if they’re there and giving a response.
So ill ask say, water and he’ll say check. Diary and he’ll say check.
It literally takes 1-2 minutes but guarantees that you haven’t forgotten anything important your child needs to carry to school.
Set Up A Routine and Stick to It
Setting up a routine not only gives you a set of tasks to do without thinking about it but it also prepares your child on what to expect next.
For instance my routine is wake, prepare myself, wake him up, make breakfast while he prepares, have breakfast together and go to school.
That routine is engrained in my son’s mind. When I wake him up, he gets up, goes brushes his teeth, wash his face, oil his face then he changes and comes down to wait for his breakfast.
When I was changing our school morning routine to match his big boy abilities, I had to keep asking him if he had done a specific activity. But after the 4th time, he was already accustomed to the routine. Now I don’t even mention anything to him. He knows what he needs to do.
The one thing, though, I’ll advice you not to do is to alter your routine occasionally. When you keep altering a routine often it stops being a routine. And instead, creates more chaos than order.
