A Smooth Start to the New School Year with Arena

The Arena App and the New School Year

The beginning of the new school year is nearly here! Do you love it? As children, we reveled in newly-sharpened pencils, blank notebooks, and dividers ready to be labeled. As parents of school-age children, we still revel in the newness. And, this time of year feels intense. Do you feel it, too? We’re not crazy; there are a lot of tasks that require our time and attention. And, there’s the added pressure that any failure on our part will ultimately be visited on our children in the form of missing supplies, incomplete permission slips, and too-small cleats for soccer season.

One of the biggest hurdles during the back-to-school season is the shopping. School supplies (classroom-specific and extras to keep at home), new clothes, new shoes, equipment for activities (sports, girl/boy scouts, piano lessons), breakfast/lunch/snack options – the list could go on, based on your family’s needs. The pre-built checklist in the newest version of The Arena App can help you keep track of all of these items or you can tailor the list for your family-specific needs. The checklist can also help you organize what to buy from certain stores so that you aren’t trekking back and forth to the same store three times because you can’t seem to remember to pick up colored pencils.

Back-to-School Success

Arena’s Planning for Back-to-School checklist also includes reminders to sign up for those after-school activities (sports, girl/boy scouts, piano lessons) before the beginning of the year, since they tend to run concurrently with the school year. Another task that is often needed (and occasionally forgotten) is the annual checkup with your pediatrician.

Other items on Arena’s checklist are good reminders, but may not be needed for your preparation: Getting a haircut is a big thing for most parents, but isn’t necessarily a must-do before school starts. Additionally, you may not need to wash your child’s backpack or lunchbox; buying a new one may be just as easy (bonus: just edit your checklist to say “Buy” instead of “Wash”). You can easily add items to the checklist as well, such as “Clean out the closet,” as a reminder to go through your child’s clothes to see what no longer fits before adding in the new outfits for the school year.

A Fresh Start for the New School Year

It is a good practice to view the start of a new school year in the same way you would a new year: A chance to start fresh, with new routines, a new chore chart, a new calendar page, and a new grade. Establish new habits for your family, and as your children get older, you can even encourage them to suggest a few things they would like to see for their new school year. Because you can save checklists, the Arena App can help you keep track of all of the different projects for the school year, as well as create checklists within each project to keep everything running as smoothly as possible.

The start of a new school year is chaotic, but the Arena App can help you manage some of the stressors so that you can focus more on the things that matter, like helping your child manage their own stress about starting a new grade (or a new school). Stay tuned for our next blog in this series, which focuses on navigating the first few weeks of school.