Back to School Breakfast 2021

Home and Organization
Written By Cassie Shepherd

Ever since we decided to homeschool, I have struggled a bit on how to handle nostalgic events. Do we get go back to school shopping? What about school plays? Are my kids missing out on the fun holiday class parties? And, one of the bigger ones, what about the first and last days of school? (These felt a little weird to me because we’re learning all the time, aren’t we?) But, somewhere along the road, I’ve learned that first of all, these were my nostalgic experiences and my kids have little feelings tied to these events. So, it probably wouldn’t be a big deal if I never did them. :) But, when I dug a little deeper and looked at all the mixed feelings I had when we pulled our kids out of public school, I realized it was more about specific memorable moments versus the actual school experience as a whole. And, I quickly realized it would be easy to create similar and perhaps even more memorable experiences for my children - in our own home. I love serving them with little parties, gifts, and surprises - these things are part of my love language. Over time, I have gained a deep appreciation that we can share these special times together as a family. Instead of being in a place where I am afraid they’re “missing out” I’ve evolved to realize how treasured these memories are. These moments have become apart of what is making our house a home. And, one day, I hope they look back on the nostalgia of their childhood and remember these days.

DETAILS

Last year I put together individual baskets full of back to school supplies for the kids. It was cute and the kids loved them, but, I feel like I filled it with a bunch of cheap items we still have extras of (mostly crayons, markers, colored pencils, ect.) So, this year I decided to do a few nicer supplies and surprise the kids with their favorite crepe breakfast (recipe below).

TABLE DECOR

KID’S SUPPLIES

  • Osmo Genius Starter Kit and Little Genius Starter Kit - To be honest, I am skeptical of these. But, I’ll keep you guys posted on whether or not we like them.

  • Prisma colored pencils and these cheaper ones for my preschooler

  • Notebooks - I don’t love these blue covers, but I ordered and tried three different other notebooks this summer and sent them all back. We need at least 98 lb paper because we use a lot of water colors and so far I have come back to these notebooks every time. 7x10 is our favorite size. I have the 9x 12 ones too for large art projects.

  • Books: Each child got a new book - this one for my almost 8 year old daughter who loves Science and this math one for her twin sister. It was hard to find a colored math book that looked fun! My 4 year old is obsessed with Piggie and Gerald books so I decided to buy him a whole collection of them so we could stop checking every single one out at the library. Finally, as I’ve been listening to more and more of Well-Educated Heart I realized I had never done Mother Goose stories with my older kids so I picked this one up for my two year old.

  • Drawing: These books are our favorites right now for learning how to draw. They tie in so well to our history and science this year so I think we’re going to get a lot of use out of them. We have all of them now except book 1 because it seemed a little over price right now. I also threw in this handwriting book for my two year old - he’ll probably just scribble in it which is fine - I just wanted him to have something while we were doing our handwriting because he just likes to be apart of things and copy us at this age.

  • Devotional Notebooks: Previously these files have been in our morning menu covers, but I needed a little refresh for the new school year so I updated the files. We use these to hold our family economy, gospel music and scriptures that align each week with CFM, the Articles of Faith, and our Children and Youth Goal Sheets. This is the listing for these in my Etsy store. I added a few updated photos at the end so you can see what I changed. If you already had this file - the updated files are in your google drive files.

CREPE RECIEPE

For almost every special occasion we have my kid’s very favorite breakfast - crepes and bacon. Before I had kids I got the easiest recipe from a breakfast cooking class I attended at our community center. The recipe recommends to let the batter sit overnight, but, honestly, it always sticks to my pan when I do this so I just make it the morning of. But, maybe try it both ways. You can use these for any type of crepes - dinner or breakfast, but 99% of the time we let them cool, spread Nutella, add in sliced strawberries and whipped cream. I use an 8 or 10 inch pan and pour a little more batter than I would for a pancake and then you tip and swirl the pan. If you’ve never seen this technique - you can watch the last 30 seconds of this video and it’ll give you a visual. This recipe will give you about 12-15 crepes depending on size. We often get two meals out of it.

4 tablespoons melted butter

1 1/3 cups

flour

1 1/4 cups milk

4 eggs

1/2 tsp salt

Mix together and refrigerate, if possible, overnight. Pour into hot pan and make crepes as thin as possible. 

I think that is it! I hope everyone has an amazing year!

Cassie Shepherd
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