Children often start back at school with mixed feelings- the excitement of seeing and playing with their friends, the worry of handling the school work and the concerns of teacher expectations.

Parents dread the early morning rush to get ready, to organise lunches and the afternoon battles with homework. Now, you can be super-organised with a Back-to-School Checklist.  Find it here from iMom. 

Avoid the 'night before' panic to complete an overlooked assessment due. Download and print a homework calendar for each child with Disney characters from Family.com Fill in the school subjects and enter the projects and assignments due dates. see here

Kids grow too fast and you need to take a moment to save a memory. Take photos of these special days. Print off these freebies from HowDoesShe.com  to create a first day of school memories. see here You could also download the Back-to-School photo checklist from simpleasthatblog.com. It provides some great photo ideas that won't take forever to set up... wonderful for creating unique photo memories.

Now.. what about school lunches? Well, kids will really look forward to lunchtime if they have some edible crayons in their packs. They are uper easy to prepare and the kids can help. You can find the directions at gourmetmomonthego.com. The instructions use pretzel sticks but I found Arnotts Fun Sticks worked best. Just dip each end into coloured choc melts and wrap a printed label around each.. done!

Kids really enjoy stickers, notes  or labels in their lunch boxes. You can find plenty of ideas for this. Tinyme.com.au have some great Australian animal cake toppers or labels that work well for any Australian theme. 

If you want to encourage your kids to eat their fruit and brighten their day, add some tags from AlphaMom.. You are 'pear'-fect! You're the apple of my eye! and more.

Or, try some colourful Muppet lunch labels from spoonful.com to print off and include to really make lunch time fun at school.

Some of these suggestions will add real colour and excitement to your  kids' day and you will enjoy it, too.

The Confident Mom Weekly Household Planner is a terrific printable that enables you to take control of your home tasks as easy, manageable lists of to-dos. Purchase and download this planner for $9 or $14 for the extra planning forms. Plus, there is the choice to download it with a daily Bible reading.
See here...

If you prefer to work with an iPhone or iPad app, take a look at HomeRoutines. This helpful little app has been designed to 'help you manage the repetitive jobs that are part of all our lives, particularly the ones related to housework. HomeRoutines is the app to wrangle those recurring tasks, and keep them from cluttering up your email, your calendar, or your big to do list.' This is a great app and can be customised to include all your regular  and recurring tasks easily and without drama. Check it out here...

The Cozi calendar and app is another helpful calendar and planner and we reviewed it in a previous post. See here...