Can you believe it – school is already upon us, so let’s all make sure we’re prepared!

Pre-school checklist:

• Backpack, or backpack with roller wheels and extender handle.
• Lunchbox. Your average pre-schooler is not reading yet, so in lieu of a note in your child’s lunchbox, how about printing out a special picture of you together, the family pet, or even a snapshot of a favorite toy, and tucking it into his or her lunchbox.
• Some schools are not just encouraging a greener way, but making it a rule. Check with your child’s school to see what the standards are for packed lunches (i.e., some schools no longer accept plastic baggies, and children must bring labeled tupperware). Heck, rules or not, you may want to do your part in being greener, in which case don’t forget a cloth napkin and reusable aluminum or stainless steel bottle for water.
• Sunscreen.

What to do while your child is in school:

• Phone calls! Haven’t been able to make those base-touching calls because you were never certain how much uninterrupted phone time you’d have? Perhaps schedule an allotted amount of time to make one call each day to catch up with a friend or family member.
• Do your own laundry. Let’s face it, you always make sure your kids have plenty of fresh clean clothes, but how about you? Get that pesky laundry done and out of the way. Maybe even clear out some old clothes that you haven’t worn in ages.
• Thin out kid’s clothes. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a drawer half filled with clothes that no longer fit my daughter. I wish I had time to sort by size and get her drawers organized and donate or store what she can no longer wear.
• Make coming home special. Make it a priority to organize some after school activities to do with your child once they are home from school. Perhaps an arts and crafts project, or maybe cooking up a little something together in the kitchen.
• My daddy friend Kenny said that if you ask general questions, you’ll get general answers. Try asking specific questions about their day when you pick them up. Instead of “How was your day?” try “Who sat next to you at snack?”He also said to make picking your kids up a big deal. All too often he sees busy parents chatting on cell phones while corralling their children into their cars without much fanfare. Let’s remember what a big deal we are to our kids and show them that we are just as excited to see them as they are to see us.

Geek Dad over at Wired.com wrote a really interesting post, listing 100 things that your kids may have to read about in history books (or will they be called history Kindles?). Some things won’t be missed, like the “The scream of a modem connecting” or getting lost, because “With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.”

Some of the endangered activities make us a little wistful, like “Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind,” or “Looking out the window during a long drive.” How about “Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment”? Solitude and time with your own thoughts are important to kids and adults alike. Makes us wonder if we are heading toward a world with too little time to reflect.

How about this one: “That there was a time before reality tv.” We’re very sorry kids won’t know about that!

Times change. Can’t help but hope that people will always read books and write letters, but you never know. What things do you think your kids will never know? Does it make you hopeful or worried?