We just finished our sixth week of school, sent home our first round of progress reports, and I am exhausted.
How about you?
I won’t go into all that’s causing the overwhelm and exhaustion because, well, that would make me even more overwhelmed and exhausted. And I’ll bet that you have your own list anyway.
Instead, I’m choosing to focus on 18 things that are actually making a positive difference for me right now.
1 – Doing something active for 30 minutes every day. Some days I walk outside, other days I do some type of streaming workout (Beachbody On Demand is my favorite), or one of my beloved FIRM DVD’s.
2 – Sticking to my favorite nutritional habits: drinking at least 8 glasses of water, eating 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables, and intermittent fasting for 16 – 19 hours every day. (To learn more about intermittent fasting, here’s a link to my favorite book: Fast Feast Repeat by Gin Stephens. She also wrote Delay, Don’t Deny and runs intermittent fasting support communities on Facebook.)
3 – Keeping the post-it note and the Flair pen manufacturers in business by making lists and writing down EVERYTHING. Seriously. I write down all the morning prep things I need to do to be ready for the virtual teaching day. I write down exactly what I am going to do during prep/planning time and what students I am going to see during asynchronous learning time, plus all the things I plan to do when school is “out” for the day.
4 – Reading something aloud to my students every single day. My students enjoy it and it is an integral part of literacy learning. That’s all good, but the main reason I do it is that I enjoy it and I believe it builds community relationships around shared texts.
5 – Remember all those lists I am making about what to do every day? I also have my daily schedule on a list. I am trying to be consistent about stopping work at a consistent time every day. That was difficult this week because I had some extra prep to do for a reading unit and because I had to create progress reports.
But my goal here is to have scheduled time away from “school,” even though my “classroom” is at home. I think about how, if I were working in school right now, I would leave the building at a (generally) consistent time every day and go do things that are on my personal or home or family tasks list. This is the same idea.
In the spring, I know that I burned myself out by working almost constantly. It was so easy to just let school tasks consume the evening when we were at home and not going anywhere or doing much else. I decided to create better habits for myself this fall.
8 – Trying very hard to get seven hours of sleep every night. I’m not consistent about that one yet.
9 – Revisiting some of my favorite cookbooks when planning meals. Three favorites: What Can I Bring? by Elizabeth Heiskell (her chicken enchiladas are amazing), Love Welcome Serve by Amy Nelson Hannon, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond.
10 – Avoiding any political news right now. Netflix, HGTV, Disney Plus, and Apple TV are my new best friends.
11 – For the same reason: more Instagram, less Twitter and Facebook.
12 – Wearing slippers to work! My UGG slippers are still my favorites, but I got these on Amazon and I like them a lot too!
15 – Pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks. I know they’re not everyone’s favorite, but they remind me that fall, my favorite season is here! Here’s a great copycat recipe if you want to make your own, inexpensive version at home.
16 – Looking for what I can change or improve instead of focusing on what isn’t so great right now. I am working on a couple of posts with tips and suggestions that are making a positive difference with my class.
Quick question for you: would you like these posts to be lengthy, with several different suggestions, or shorter, with more bite-size tips to try? I would appreciate hearing your feedback!
17 – Appreciating my teacher friends. They are always the best. But right now, when no one else can quite understand what we are dealing with, they are my lifeline. I am finding that all of us feel so unsure and so depleted — almost like being a first-year teacher all over again. Sharing those feelings, asking for help, getting their tips for how they are doing whatever it is I am struggling to do, asking for advice – all of those things are keeping me going. I always come away from these conversations with renewed energy, mostly from just knowing that other teachers completely understand how I feel and are “in the trenches” with me, struggling to do the very best job we can do right now.
18 – Expressing gratitude. Every day, I find at least three things or people or events that I can appreciate. I find it helps to thank your teacher friends, your students, your students’ parents, your own family — anyone who says or does something that helps you, makes you laugh, or builds you up. There is much good all around us, always. Making an effort to look for it and to be thankful for it helps get me out of whatever funk I might be in.
On that note — I am grateful to you for doing the work that you are doing. What is saving you right now?
September 11, also called Patriot Day, is a somber day of remembrance and can be difficult to discuss with children.
Whenever I have a difficult topic to discuss, I always start with a picture book. I also remember Mr. Rogers’ wise advice:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
~ Fred Rogers
With all of the books and videos I share below, consider leading discussions about how ordinary people became heroes on that day.
Here are my favorite picture books to share with kids. I am also including video links, when available, in case you are teaching virtually and can’t locate a copy of the book to read aloud.
*September 11 Then and Now by Peter Benoit. This is an age-appropriate description of what happened, the causes and effects, and includes lots of resources for students who want to explore the topic further.
*September Roses by Jeanette Winter. This book tells the story of two South African sisters and the unique memorial they create in New York City. Here is a video version of the book.
*The Survivor Tree by Cheryl Somers Albin. This book is new to me but I love the story of a tree surviving against the odds. Here is a video version.
*This Very Tree by Sean Rubin is told from the tree’s point of view.
*The Man in the Red Bandanna by Honor Crowther Fagan. This is an amazing story of a man who saved many people from the towers and is quite inspirational. Here is the video version.
*A Place of Remembrance – the official book of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
*The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordecai Gerstein is an amazing story of a daring tightrope walk in 1974. This book tells more about the towers when they were first built in New York. Here is the video version.
*The Little Chapel That Stood by A. B. Curtiss. This beautiful book is now out of print and very expensive, but it tells the story of an historic chapel near the towers that miraculously survived the destruction. Here is a read-aloud version on YouTube.
If you’re interested in doing a chapter book read aloud (or adding books to your classroom library), here are some great titles:
*Eleven by Tom Rogers. This is a wonderful story about a boy named Alex who turns 11 on September 11. The story is told from both Alex’s perspective and the perspective of a grown man.
*Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story by Nora Raleigh Baskin. This story follows four kids living in different parts of the country on that day.
*Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes. This book helps to capture the confusion that many children feel about the event and why it was so significant.
Resources for lesson plans:
*The 9/11 Memorial & Museum offers several high-quality lesson plans that are age appropriate for grades 3-12.
The strange start to the 2020-2021 school year is here.
How are you doing?!
I am trying to just take one day at a time (sometimes one hour at a time) and give myself — and others — lots of grace.
But I’m also trying to rely on what I know to be the best things to do with my kids, right from the beginning.
So here’s what I’m planning first: activities I will do to get to know my students. Even though these kinds of activities take an investment of time upfront, they support every single thing I will do and teach throughout the year.
All year long activities
*I always greet my students at the door in the morning as they enter the classroom. I can’t do that physically, but as students log in to Google Meet, I will call them by name and greet them with “good morning,” “I’m glad to see you,” etc. I want my students to feel “seen” by me every morning and this is the best I can do right now.
*I will continue to have a brief morning meeting every day. This is always a time when we gather together (over Google Meet), review our schedule for the day, share news about what is going on with each other, and sometimes do some other game or activity.
*Check-in with students frequently. I love using tools like Padlet, Google forms, or posting a question in Google Classroom. Padlet and questions in Google Classroom allow students to see each others’ responses while Google forms allow my students to give me information in a more private way. If I haven’t heard from or seen a student one day, I will reach out to them with an email or a phone call.
*Use frequent “temperature checks” during lessons. This can come in the form of thumbs up/thumbs down, putting emojis in the chat, making comments in the chat, using Pear Deck interactive slides, or (my new thing to learn) using tools like Poll Everywhere in Google slides. (I’ll let you know how I’m using it, once I figure it out!)
*I use read-aloud time to connect with students and help them connect. While doing read aloud over a screen is not the same as reading aloud in person, I am determined to keep that important part of our classroom routine in the virtual setting.
Those are some basic things I will do every single day. Now here’s what I’ll do in the first few days.
First few days activities
*One of the first assignments I will give is sending a Padlet wall to my students with directions for adding their info. In addition to their name, I’ll have them include a selfie (or a gif or meme if they prefer that) along with five facts about themselves (since they’re now in fifth grade). I’ll include a Padlet entry about myself as a model. I love Padlet and use it a lot because it gives kids a chance to interact with each other and see each other’s entries.
*One of my favorite bloggers is Mary from Teaching With a Mountain View. She has some great icebreaker activities on this post. I’ve used her first suggestion for the “Hello, My Name Is . . .” as a first day name game and it’s a lot of fun.
*I will share my almost-famous 58 Random Facts About Mrs. Smith Google slides presentation. (58 = my age. You could use any number you like!) These random facts include facts about my family (my husband is in one fact, my kids in another, my dog in a third), what I like (Doritos on one slide, blue hydrangeas on another, reading on another, etc.), what I am afraid of (heights, snakes, sharks). You get the idea. These don’t have to be big things, but they do let your students see you as a “regular” person, just like them, and allow them to start finding things that they have in common with you. (By the way — I don’t share all those facts on one day. I break it up throughout the week so no one gets too sick of hearing about me!)
*I will ask students to share information about themselves. I usually do an activity where I send home a brown paper lunch bag and ask kids to add things that can fit inside the bag. These items should represent them and their interests in some way. Then they bring the bag to school and we share a few of these every day. I’m going to do the same thing this year, but not limit it to what fits in a bag. I’ll ask them to share whatever they can show through their screen. I’ve found this is another great activity for helping kids to find common interests with each other.
*After kids have shared their brown bags in class, I have table groups create a list of things that they noticed that many kids have in common in our class. We make a giant list on the board, with each table sharing one idea until all ideas have been shared. We then vote and choose six or seven (usually based on the number of tables in my class) common interests. Then each table chooses one of those interests to illustrate on a 12″ x 18″ piece of paper with the words “We Like ______” in the center of the paper. They can decorate the poster however they want (a great cooperative group activity). Then, each student grabs a marker and rotates from table to table, signing each poster that represents one of their interests. (Rarely do I have students sign every single poster.) I sign the posters as well. We then display these posters in our classroom, if there is room to do so.
We can’t do that this year. So – here is my work-around. I’m going to randomly assign kids to small groups and let them know what time to meet with me on Google Meet. I will let them create a list. After all the small groups have created lists, we’ll meet together and narrow the list down. Then I will create a Google slides template with each of the interests, share with the students, and ask them to write their name (with some kind of colorful font) on each slide that represents them. We can’t use these as decorations, but the opportunity to meet together, discuss, narrow down, and then sign slides will still be a valuable part of the process.
*Another great activity for getting to know my students is to have them write a bio-poem about themselves. I write one first, to give them a model. Then I ask them to write and share a bio-poem about themselves.
Here is the template I use:
First name
3 adjectives that describe you
Daughter/son of . . . and sibling of . . .
Who loves . . .
Who feels . . .
Who needs. . .
Who fears. . .
Who would like to see . . . (something you wish to see happen in the world)
Last name
*One of my favorite beginning of the year activities is to read a favorite book that involves a character’s name. Some of my favorites are: Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi, or My Name is Sangoel by Karen Williams. I then ask my students to ask their families for the story of how their name was chosen and to find the meaning of their name if they can do that. We share these stories and they are always wonderful.
*Another activity to do with students’ names is to have students create an acrostic with the letters of their first name. (Again, you might want to make one of your own as an example first.) They write each letter vertically, then write a word or phrase that starts with each letter. I ask them to think of a word or phrase that describes them.
*I love reading Peter Reynolds’ book Ish. After talking about the power of words, we talk about growth mindset. One of my favorite Teachers Pay Teachers resources is Angela Watson’s Growth Mindset unit and interactive journal. Another resource I like to use for this is Create-Abilities’ Famous Failures packet. After reading Ish and learning about growth mindset, I have my students create their own growth mindset poster with their favorite empowering phrase. In the past, we kept these posters in the front of their binders, but this year I will ask them to keep the posters in their home workspace.
*Peter Reynolds’ book Say Something is another great book for getting discussions started. I usually use this activity once students are more comfortable with me and with each other. We use the book to talk about changes we would like to see in the world. We then share our ideas on a Padlet wall with the prompt: If you could change the world, what would you do?
*Yet another option is to have students create a self-portrait with paper only! This is a fun art project that can be done with any kind of paper that is available. It’s fun to see kids get creative when they’re not allowed to use anything except paper to represent their hair, their eye color, etc. With distance learning, I may not use this activity if paper at home is an issue for any of my students. Use your best judgment on this one.
*After a few days together, I ask my students to write a letter to me and tell me more about themselves. By this time, they will have heard all or most of my random facts. We would have spent a fair amount of time together reading picture books, doing some content instruction, maybe even playing games. Once they know me a little better and are beginning to trust me, I ask them to write me a letter (or type in Google docs) and tell me more about themselves, what they want to work on this year, what they are good at and not so good at, etc.
*Asking parents for information about their child is also helpful. I use a Google form for this so that parents can respond quickly and easily. Here are the questions I use:
Student’s name
Parent’s name
What does your child like most about school and learning?
Is there anything about your child’s learning style that you would like us to know or that would help us encourage their best learning?
What are your child’s strengths? What are they good at or enjoy doing? (It does not have to be anything about school)
Is there anything your child is really scared of?
As a parent/guardian, what are you most concerned about this year? (Reading, math, friends, new school . . . anything you think we should know)
Any additional comments?
A new question for this year: What went well with distance learning in the spring? What didn’t go well?
*Playing some games together (at least one time a week), is a great way to get to know your students and to help them interact with each other in a virtual format. Here is a link to my post with some great ideas for games.
*We will spend the first three weeks doing as much practice as possible with digital tools. We want our kids to get really efficient with navigating Google Classroom and with using other tools, such as Padlet, Google docs, Flipgrid, and Google slide presentations.
*Bitmoji classroom backgrounds are quite popular right now. Instead of making my own, I’m going to ask my students to help me design what they would like to see in the virtual classroom. That will help make it “ours” from the start. I’ll do this by asking them to share what they would like to see in the background and maybe showing them some examples of other virtual backgrounds. The Facebook groups “Teaching with NEONS” and “Bitmoji Craze for Educators” are great resources.
*Tools like Padlet and Flipgrid are great for getting student voices (and images) into the virtual classroom. While Google Meet and Zoom meetings are great for gathering everyone together, they do not allow for everyone to share in the same ways as they would do in the classroom. Padlet gives everyone a chance to share their own thoughts while seeing others’ ideas as well. And Flipgrid is a fun way to share brief videos instead of writing their thinking.
*Using prompts on Padlet or as part of your morning meetings can get kids talking and sharing.
Here’s a list of prompts:
~share one brag (good thing) and one drag (not-so-good thing) from your weekend
~share one thing or person you appreciate in our class
~tell one thing you heard someone else say that was helpful to you
~share one of the 3 A’s at the end of the class day (an appreciation, an apology to someone, or an a-ha moment when you learned or discovered something new)
~tell me something good (anything positive)
~share an emoji that shows how you’re feeling right now
~share a gif (on Padlet) that represents you
*Use music! Ask your students for their favorite clean lyric song titles or use songs from playlists created by Miss Bensko on Spotify. Playing a song when they log into Zoom or Google Meet or at a transition time is fun way to incorporate music they like and make the online classroom environment more inviting.
*Plan your read-alouds for the first week. Here is a link to some great picture book read-alouds and a link to some great chapter book read-alouds. You can read aloud when you meet with your students live and then discuss the book. You can also videotape yourself reading aloud and leave the links in your online learning platform so kids can listen whenever they want.
*It’s still important to discuss routines and procedures with your students.
My course “Calm the Overwhelm of Back to School Planning” gives detailed directions for thinking through routines and procedures, for both virtual and in-person learning. Here’s the link.
My next course will be called “Get Started Teaching – First Things First” and it gives lots more details for starting the year off right, managing your time, getting organized, building relationships with your students, and making sure you keep self-care #1. I’ll let you know when it launches!
I hope some of these ideas will be helpful for you. I’d love to hear how your year is going! Comment below or send me an email. We can do this, friends!
If you are a teacher who is teaching remotely again this year, I’m in it with you. We will all get through this together.
Here are 12 things I am doing before school officially starts.
1 – Since we use Google Suite tools, my grade level team and I are setting up a Google site to be linked to our school website. What we are including to start:
*our schedule
*how to contact us
*directions for parents on how to navigate Google Classroom
*links to our weekly email updates
*tech troubleshooting videos for students (how to log in, how to turn in assignments on Google Classroom, etc.)
2 – We are scheduling one-to-one Google Meets with students. These visits are very brief but give us a chance to connect with each student before school begins, answer questions, ask them questions about themselves — all the things we would do if we were having a “Meet the Teacher” event at school. We are using Sign Up Genius to schedule these meetings.
3 – We are sending an email to ask parents for important “what I need my child’s teacher to know before the first day of school” information.
In this email, we will ask for:
*the preferred way to contact parents (email, cell phone, another phone)
*if there are other adults they want us to communicate with regarding their child’s learning (tutors, other parents who are assisting with remote learning, grandparents, babysitters, etc.)
*information about how their child is feeling about back to school
*any other information the parent wants us to know before the first day.
4 – send an “I’m so glad you’re in my class” email to each student prior to the first day. (In other years, I think it’s great to send postcards through the mail, but everything has been down to the wire this year.) If you have time to send postcards through the mail, here’s a cute option from Sherry Beauchamp on Teachers Pay Teachers.
5 – I will set a daily schedule for myself — when I am “on” and teaching and when I am “off.”
This is so important because I noticed in the spring that responding to emails, giving feedback on student work, etc. took SO much longer than usual. And because I had my computer and nowhere else to go, I would just work all day and into the evening. I knew it wasn’t healthy, but we were in crisis mode.
We’re still somewhat in crisis mode, but this is a more familiar scenario now, unfortunately. Since we have no idea how long this is going to last, I need to be more careful about setting up a healthier schedule for myself and keep some boundaries between “work” and “home.”
6 – I am going to stick to a daily self-care routine that includes these 10 basics:
*Getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night
*Get up earlier in the morning so I have time for myself and for a somewhat leisurely morning routine. Here’s my post about developing your own morning routine.
*Exercise for 30 minutes every day
*Eat 6-10 servings of fruit & vegetables every day
*Keep up with my gratitude journal (see more about that in my morning routine post)
*Keep up with my morning pages (see more about that in my morning routine post)
*Talk/vent/share with someone about school stuff every day (preferably another teacher or former teacher who understands what you’re dealing with)
*Read every day (something unrelated to education)
*Listen to a podcast or a book on Audible
*Walk for a few minutes
I know I talk a lot about self-care on this blog, but that’s because I see it as the #1 way to be your best self and to be the best you can be for the people in your life. Here’s a recent post about how self-care helps you be the best teacher you can be.
(By the way, if you’re feeling a lot of anxiety about getting your school year started, join my course “Calm the Overwhelm of Back to School Planning.” It will help you out with that self-care part as well!)
7 – Set up my office/teaching space. Here are some things I found useful for teaching back in the spring and which I will use again.
8 – We’ve also discussed doing an in-person meeting with students, either at their home (socially distanced and outside) or at a local park or another meeting place. Have any of you done this? If so, do you have any good tips?
9 – Make sure that I know every student’s name and that I am pronouncing them correctly. I simply ask the child to tell me how they pronounce their name.
10 – In addition to getting to know my students, it’s also important for me to get to know their families. So, in addition to the hundreds of other things on my list, I plan to communicate with all families before school begins or within the first two weeks.
Phone calls might be the best way to do this, but I will offer either a phone call or a Google Meet. We will talk about their goals for their child, etc. I will also send home the list of questions in advance so that parents can think about their responses. They can email these back to me or have a conversation with me – whichever they prefer.
Here’s an example of some of the questions I usually ask:
*What does your child like most about school and learning?
*Is there anything about your child’s learning style that you would like me to know or that would help me encourage their best learning?
*What are your child’s strengths? What are they good at or enjoy doing? (It does not have to be anything in relation to school)
*As a parent/guardian, what are you most concerned about this year in fifth grade? (Reading, math, friends, new school . . . anything you think I should know.)
11 – When you talk to parents, here are some helpful tips: introduce yourself & express your enthusiasm for having their child in your class, be honest about how you feel about remote learning but stay positive.
Emphasize that you are going to do the very best job you can do and make this experience the best you can for their child. Tell them how and when they can contact you and when you are available. Find out how they would prefer to be contacted – email or phone.
Share your schedule for the day so they know when their child needs to be available for “live” teaching and when your office hours will be. If you can, introduce them to whatever online platform your school uses.
Tell them how they can access the information they might need as you begin online instruction (the schedule, for instance). Let them express their own concerns and ask questions. If you don’t know the answers,
write the questions down and assure the parents that you will get back to them with some kind of answer or response.
Even if your district is great about communicating all of this stuff to parents, your personal contact with families will go a long way for helping parents see that you are on their side.
12 – One of the things that families may tell you is their frustration with not knowing how to access online learning platforms (such as Zoom, SeeSaw, or Google Classroom/Google Meet). Consider sharing some videos showing how to use these tools. You can make videos yourself or search for them on YouTube. Thankfully, there are a lot of great options out there right now since we’re all doing this kind of instruction!
We can do this. Have a great start to your school year!
It’s official. My school district will start the year with remote learning for at least nine weeks.
I absolutely support getting kids and teachers back in schools, but we have to do that SAFELY.
I am so tired of this pandemic, so tired of wearing a mask, so tired of not being able to do my usual activities, and so tired of not being in my classroom.
Raise your hand if you’re overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed too.
I even created a course for teachers about planning for back to school called “Calm the Overwhelm.” So I am going to take my own advice from that course and start calming my overwhelm by making some lists.
In the course, I talk about the importance of developing your class procedures before you even set up your classroom. This is important because your procedures will dictate the way you design the classroom set-up.
What are the “procedures” that I need to have in place for remote learning?
Here’s my list of 10 procedures that I want to implement:
1 – re-creating our PLC’s back to school plans to make them work for remote learning
2 – re-creating our PLC’s first reading, writing, math, science, & social studies units to make them work for remote learning
3 – setting up a schedule for synchronous learning time
4 – setting up a schedule for office hours, for small group times, and for whole group time (this goes along with the synchronous learning time above)
5 – hold one-to-one conferences with students (probably with Google Meet so we can see each other)
6 – have very brief conferences with all families (by phone or Google Meet)
7 – in addition to that daily schedule to be shared with parents and students, I am creating a daily schedule for myself so that I can be sure I am maintaining boundaries between “work” and “home”
8 – create/continue a daily self-care routine (and make sure that I include it on that daily schedule for me)
9 – incorporate what I’ve read and learned this summer (from books and online PD)
10 – focus on creating and building our class community from the very beginning.
And yes — I’m tired already!
I am listing each of these procedures on a separate page in a notebook. Then, as I think of ways to implement that procedure, I will add them to my lists.
In my next posts, I’ll share more details about how I plan to implement these procedures.
What am I missing? What procedures do you think will be most important to implement at the beginning of the year?
Wow, what a year. Now that 2019-20 is officially behind us, it’s time to take a breath. We have survived one of the most challenging and stressful school years ever and we deserve a break now more than ever. Regardless of how your school year will be starting, take the next few weeks to relax, reflect, and renew.
Here’s how teachers can make the most of summer break.
First, for the relaxing part:
Give yourself permission to totally disconnect from school.
Here are some ways to do that:
*Read some books that are just for fun. Here are some on my list!
When I think of something for that topic or category, I can quickly jot it down in my notebook. Writing it down helps me continue to relax, knowing that my “brilliant idea” is safely written down and I can come back to it when I’m ready.
~what worked well this past school year? Think about what worked well when you were in the classroom. Then think about what worked well during distance learning. (In case we are doing some combination of distance learning next year, it will be helpful to remember what actually worked!)
~what do I want to change or improve in the next school year?
~what are some books I want to read or things I want to learn?
And now to renew:
*Think about how you want to feel by the end of the summer. What will make you feel like it was a great summer for you? Will you feel more connected to people you love? Will you feel more relaxed? Productive? Healthier? Do you want to add money to your bank account? All of the above?!
*Now think about what you would need to do in order to have those feelings. Will you need to plan to spend time with certain people? What would make you feel more relaxed and less stressed by the end of the summer? What routines would help you feel more productive? What routines would help improve your health or fitness? How might you earn some extra money this summer?
*I like to use time in the summer to spend time with people I love or to catch up with friends I might not see as often during the school year. Even though COVID-19 is still impacting our social lives, use technology to connect with people you have not seen or talked with in a while.
*Make a list of health & wellness appointments you need to make or keep throughout the year. (Yearly physical, pap smear, mammogram, eye doctor, dental cleanings, etc.) Write down the months when these appointments need to be scheduled.
By the way: nobody says you have to do all these appointments during the summer. Sometimes it’s a good idea to schedule a day during the school year during which you will knock out two or three of these appointments.
*Make a list of recipes or healthy meals to try. During the school year, planning and cooking healthy meals can be a chore when you get super busy. Make a meal plan during the summer and try out some new recipes to add to your rotation.
Summer is a time to step back, take a deep breath, and take some time for yourself. How will you relax, reflect, and renew this summer?
Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
