Make Back-to-School Charms to Help Kids Get Themselves Ready

My daughter is carrying a backpack regularly for the first time this year, and I find myself constantly asking her if she has all the things she needs (which admittedly isn’t much; she’s only in second grade).

If you have a lot of kids or a lot of things to keep track of, these DIY backpack zipper charms from Lemon Lime Adventures by way of Imagination Soup would be a great way to help kids to keep track of what they need to pack from day to day.

Using Shrinky Dink paper, kids can write and/or draw the different things they need to keep in their bag, then make them into little charms they can hang from the zipper pull. For younger kids, adults can draw the pictures. Or grab Dayna’s book, from which this activity is excerpted, where you’ll find charms you can trace.

Do you have any tips for keeping kids and their backpacks organized? I’d love to hear them!

[Photo: Imagination Soup.]

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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