Ada starts her final year of preschool today, so to mark the occasion, we did a fun little Back-to-School dinner last night! I first got the idea from @MerricksArt and sprinkled it with a little something from @SimplyOnPurpose, and I think it’s a simple tradition that is here to stay!
Other than the actual food, the dinner had three core elements:
Theme
Giving something a theme always makes it more fun for kids (and for me, too, if we’re being honest!). A theme gives you a topic to focus on, as well as a starting point for some simple decor!
The theme we chose for the evening (and for the year) was “Bee the Best You.” It was based loosely on the teachings found in Matthew chapter 5 (beatitudes) and more fully on this talk, which details several things we strive to be: Be grateful, be smart, be clean, be true, be humble, be prayerful, be involved, be positive, and be still. During dinner we talked about what each of those things mean and why they’re important.
Then, once we finished dinner, we took some time to fill out the bumblebees that I had drawn on the paper tablecloth. I gave each bee three stripey sections, and we each wrote down three things we hope to “bee” this year. Some came from the list above, and some were our own things. We told Ada that she could choose from the words we talked about, or anything else she could think of, but ultimately she chose three of the words we talked about. I will say that I encouraged her to switch one of them for “humble,” because truth be told, I’d really love for her to get better at listening to and trusting me, even when it doesn’t make sense to her! Ha, we’ll see how it goes :)
Letters of Love and Encouragement
Ada recently found my stash of blank thank-you cards, and she quickly became obsessed with both writing on them and wanting me to write notes to her. After I wrote her one note telling her I loved her and thanking her for cleaning her room, she was beaming. It was a major sign to me that words of affirmation are high up there on her love languages! Hence why I wanted to make special words part of the special evening.
Russ and I each wrote her a short letter (ahead of time) telling her things we love about her and things we hope she’ll “bee” this upcoming year, and then we read them to her during dessert. I kind of hoped for a big reaction like I got a few weeks prior with that first note, but honestly, she was more preoccupied with her donut at that point haha :)
In the future, we’ll probably encourage siblings to write letters to each other as well, but that’s a little ways off :) We also opted NOT to do a letter for Holly this year, as she wouldn’t understand it and isn’t going to school. We’ll write one to her whenever she starts preschool!
Fancy Setup
Other than the themed paper tablecloth, the only other things I added were bumble bee napkins, chargers under the plates, and fancy glasses for our fancy blueberry lemonade. All in all I spent less than $15 (for things I’ll reuse!) to totally up-level the tablescape! Making things fancy and adding some decor doesn’t have to cost much — even just a few items from the Dollar Store can make a big impact!
Does your family do anything special to celebrate the return to school? I’d love to hear about all your fun back-to-school traditions!
