First Day of Homeschool Traditions {You'll Want to Steal These!}

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We just finished our first “official” day of homeschool for the year…and we had such a sweet day!

A couple of new traditions mixed with some old ones, lots of learning, and everything went so smoothly I’m honestly a little bit surprised 😂.

From the great reviews (and hugs!) my kids gave me, I could tell they were appreciative of the little extra effort I put into making our first day special. And we’re all a bit more excited about settling into our new routines this fall.

In case you’re still prepping for YOUR first day of homeschool and want a couple of ideas on ways you can make it special, let me share with you what we did!

Our Slow Start to the Homeschool Year

I say last week was our first “official” day because we actually do a little bit of schooling throughout the summer.

Mainly math and Latin (to keep up with those subjects), and this year my son continued science.

Starting in July, we can begin tracking our homeschool hours, so that’s when we slowly start to add in some of our other subjects.

Typically we’ll add one subject or so a week until we hit August and we are up to our “full load”.

First Day of Homeschool Traditions

So even though we’re already “doing school”, I like to make a big deal of our first “full” day. Because it is a big deal to me, and I want my kids to be excited about what’s to come during the year!

I’ve shared some first day of homeschool traditions in the past, and there are a few new things I did this year that I thought were really fun (and were a BIG hit with my kids!).

By the way, if you’d like a peek at our entire first day, check out the video below…then make sure to come back here for links and details!

Here are some of the things I did this year on our first day of homeschool.

Set the Table the Night Before

I have never done this before, but it was a really nice touch, and just made the entire day feel a little bit more special for us!

❇️ I bought this polka dot tablecloth for the occasion, but I made sure to buy one that was reusable. We’ll definitely get use out of this for birthdays and other events!

❇️ I found this cute chalkboard sign to set out on the table, welcoming the kids to our first day of homeschool. Don’t judge my chalk art-work, clearly I need to brush up and learn some skills in this department!

❇️ We purchased some fresh flowers because…why not? I LOVE fresh flowers on our kitchen table, so this was a must!

After these initial decorations, we finished setting the table with some little gifts for the kids.

First Day of Homeschool Gifts

I’ve seen a lot of people say they use school supplies as their gifts for the first day of homeschool…and I’ve seen some really great set-ups of this!

I was not nearly as prepared to do a gift basked of school supplies for the kids, so I kind of did a fun/practical gift along with some new notebooks we’ll be using this year.

❇️ I bought some new water bottles for my kids for the year. I thought this would be a great gift because a) they all needed new water bottles, and b) my kids go through a TON of cups each day in our home.

I figured, if they all had a special “homeschool water bottle”, they could use that throughout the entire day, clean it each night, and that would be the end of all our cup madness.

Anyway, I have 4 separate links for these for you because I wanted to get a color for each of my kids that they liked, and there were a variety of sales going on when I found them. If you watched my video above, here are all of the bottles you saw/that I purchased.

Green water bottle
Light blue water bottle
Glitter water bottle
Red sparkle water bottle

This was honestly ALL I was going to put out on the table for my kids 😂. But then one of my YouTube viewers saw me mention I was going to use these as our first day of homeschool gifts, and she mentioned stickers would be a fun idea so the kids could personalize them.

❇️ So, I bought these stickers and these stickers for my kids to use to personalize their water bottles.

Well, it wasn’t until I was setting the table, though, that I realized that one of the water bottles I bought (the glitter one) wouldn’t do so well with stickers. So, I decided to also set out some of the new notebooks I bought for our homeschool and let the kids go to town decorating those as well.

In case you’re curious, here are the copywork notebooks I bought. I am loving this brand because I could buy one in a different color for each of my kids that they loved.

They are really well-made. I also bought spelling notebooks and a kindergarten notebook from the same company.

❇️ Finally, I made these cute little pencils for my kids out of Rolo candies. I wish I had gotten a still picture of them, but you can check them out in the video. This page also does a great job of showing you how to make them!

I wish I could take credit for this idea, but this came from a YouTube subscriber as well (it’s a fantastic community over there…are you subscribed yet? 😉).

I had no idea what a hit the stickers and the Rolo pencils would be, but my kids absolutely loved them, and they had so much fun decorating their water bottles and notebooks on our first day of homeschool. I’m so glad we added this little tradition this year!

Special First Day of School Breakfast

A special breakfast is a typical first day of homeschool tradition. We have done funfetti pancakes the past few years, so that of course was my go-to.

Here’s the funfetti pancake recipe I use. Don’t forget the whipped cream and extra sprinkles! We also usually have sausage and eggs in addition to pancakes.

Traditional First Day of School Pictures

It’s been a few years since I’ve remembered to do the honorary “first day of school porch pictures”, and I was feeling a little bit sad I hadn’t kept up this tradition. The last time we took these, my youngest was maybe 1 1/2 years old.

No time like the present to pick this back up! I definitely recommend snapping these first day pictures of your kids. I offered to buy mine special “first day of school outfits”, and my youngest is the only one who took me up on it (he’s all about anything army-related these days).

First Day of School Surveys

This is another tradition we’ve done pretty much every year: the first day of school survey.

My kids enjoy filling out these little questionnaires about themselves, and I really enjoy reading them (both now and when I uncover them later on as I’m going through and organizing school work!).

New Homeschool Lunch Plan

This one is more of a new tradition for ME! This year, I decided to get a bit more organized about lunchtime in our homeschool, and I created a monthly lunch plan for us.

Lunchtime began to feel a little chaotic to me in our last year of homeschooling; my kids often fended for themselves, and I honestly wasn’t doing a great job of making sure we had a variety of foods (including fruits and veggies) on hand each week for lunch.

So I planned out 20 meals that I knew my kids would love—different meals—so I could simplify my shopping each week, know what I needed to do come lunchtime, and so that once we get into a routine, my kids can even take turns and easily help prepping lunch for everyone.

This is going to be a game changer, I can tell. Kids loved this as well.

I really enjoyed making lunch for everyone again (I got out of this habit, and typically would let lunchtime be sucked away by me checking emails or disconnecting for a bit). My goal is to stay focused and intentional, and I think this will help.

During lunch, we all enjoyed watching World Watch News together, which is a great habit to get into in your homeschool if you don’t already watch this with your kids!

So many of you asked me about my lunch menu after seeing it in my YouTube video that I made a template and put it up in my shop for free. Click below if you want to grab it for yourself!

Successful First Day of Homeschool

I hope you enjoyed this peek into our first day, and maybe found a couple of ideas you can steal and use yourself to make the first day special!

You don’t have to do anything at all, but a lot of this was simple and just enough to make the day feel a little bit different and exciting for my kids.

Let me know in the comments what YOUR favorite first day of homeschool traditions are. I can’t wait to hear them!

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Our First Day of Homeschool {Fun Traditions You Can Steal!}

Our Slow Start to the Homeschool Year