Create a Great Back to School Morning Routine

Q: What is the secret to a successful school morning?

A: An effective evening routine!

I know that “an effective evening routine” doesn’t feel like it fully answers the question about a successful school morning, but give me a minute. When you are prepped and ready for school the night before, the morning is SO MUCH SMOOTHER. So let’s take the first step in talking about our evening routine in this email and we are going to keep going with this process to implement it over the next three weeks. And after we go through this, we will look at our morning routine!

Grab your free morning routine guide Here!

First, we start with the time that your people need to go to bed and we work backwards from there. Let’s first find a good bedtime for your buddies. Starting with your wake up time and using the Sleep Foundation’s ideal sleep times, we can work backwards here, too: 

• Preschoolers (3-5 years old) need 10-13 hours of sleep every night
• School-aged children (6-13 years old) need between 9-11 hours a night
• Teenagers (14-17 years) need 8-10 hours every night.

If your kids need to be up at 6AM, work backwards with their hours and put a time to their bedtime. Sleep matters SO much, Mama! For attitudes, attention spans, relationships, nutrition, all of it. But that’s another topic for another person! 

Let’s get back to planning our bedtime… 

After we have our bedtime set, we work slightly backwards again to figure out our “tuck-in routine” and timing. Do you read books, sing songs, say prayers, talk about highs and lows of the day, snuggle, etc? Don’t forget to work this timing into your bedtime routine!!! You can’t get to the bed at 8pm for an 8pm “go to sleep time.” It takes time to have these special moments AND it takes time for their brains to ramp down and fall asleep… just like it does ours.

So let me put my Charlie up as an example because we are revamping his schedule now. He needs to be on the bus at 6:30AM, so he has to be out of bed and functioning by 6AM (if you have people who are NOT morning people and need more ramp-up time, factor this into your routine… we will talk about this later!). Charlie needs a good 10 hours of sleep every night. Therefore, he needs to be asleep by eight. We are going to shoot for him to be ready and IN bed by 7:30 because our tuck-in routine includes reading books, saying prayers, and a few hugs and kisses.

So this is your first step, Mama. Figure out your child/children’s unique bedtimes and your “tuck-in routine” start implementing those this week. 

Did you know you were going to be working on your subtraction skills today?! 

Here’s where the “great evening routine” = “successful school morning” part comes in… the PRE-TUCK-IN Checklist.

I will go back to talking about Charlie and his routine. 

Before Charlie’s Tuck-In Bedtime Routine, I need him to have showered, brushed his teeth, and put on his pajamas. And BEFORE THAT… this is the part that TRULY helps… I need him to have his clothes laid out, shoes by the door, backpack packed with homework IN the bag, and his lunch made. This all takes 30 minutes on his most focused day, so I am banking on it usually taking a full hour. SO…

6:30 pm is when Charlie will start his prep time for school the next day. He has a laminated checklist with each of those items lined out so I am not reminding (nagging) him and he isn’t trying to remember each item. This includes everything I listed above. It’s a seven item list and he thrives in this system.

***My ultimate goal is to teach him responsibility and how to take care of the things he needs to do. This then builds his confidence, reduces both our stress in the morning, and helps him be successful at school. Which ALL translates into real life-long lessons. All through working on a routine.

Can you think through what this looks like in your family this week? Individualize it for your children as needed and make sure it’s helping YOU, too. What are the things you feel like you are CONSTANTLY reminding them about in the morning? Or running back in the door to grab once everyone is in the car? These are the things you can do the night before! 

Your kids are so capable and your whole family will benefit from this new evening routine.

Now let's talk about you and your personal morning routine. I know that everyone’s morning looks so different… some of you head to work, some homeschooling all day, and others may get the kids out the door and are left with an empty house. Regardless of what you will be doing the rest of the day, your morning routine sets the tone for it.

Here are a few tips to help you set the tone I know you’re striving for:

1. Get up before your children. I think we all know this one but it is so hard to live by. 
2. Have your coffee on a timer so when you walk out it is hot and ready for you. Amen? Amen.
3. Spend time — even if it is just 10 minutes — doing something you love like reading, journaling, walking, praying, or just being still. 
4. Prep breakfast for you and your kids so that when you get them up that is one less thing to do. Some of this could also be moved to meal-prep day or the night before, too!* 
5. Make sure to use your phone or Alexa to help you stay on track in the morning. Some ideas for alarms or reminders would be for getting kids up, taking medicine, assembling lunch and packing a snack, and an alarm for leaving the house. 
6. If your kiddos do chores in the morning, make sure that you have set those expectations and communicated them clearly!
7. Consider timing out your tasks. Like we’ve done with our nighttime routines… look at the time you need to walk out the door and walk that time backwards through all your personal steps and the ones where your children need your help. 

Will you resach out and tell me the current feeling of your morning routine? If it’s currently chaos and you’ve seen anything helpful in these emails, will you let me know what you’re planning to try this week to bring some calm to your home?

*If you don’t have a meal-prep day, I would love for you to check out my batchworking course! In a world of multitasking being king, this method is a total gamechanger.