Stay at Home Activity Mom

Fall is my favorite season to slow down with my kids. Posting this a little early so you have time to actually plan these in, not just scroll past them in October. 🍂 Here are a few traditions worth starting this year…the ones I hope they still remember when they’re grown.

🎃 Try a new pumpkin patch every year instead of going back to the same one

🍿 Family movie night with apple cider at the first sign of fall

🍎 Go apple picking and let them eat one right off the tree

🌳 Start a gratitude tree — draw one thing every day, together

🚗 Drive around and look at Halloween decorations with hot chocolate in the cup holders

📸 Start a “first day of fall” photo in the same spot every year

🍽️ Let them pick where to go or what to make for dinner to celebrate the first week back at school

🍂 Rake a giant leaf pile and jump in it before you clean it up

Save this so you actually start one this week. Which one are you trying first? Tell me below 🍂

It was the kids who already knew what was going to happen.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Here’s what that actually looked like at home:

Shift bedtime and wake up time 15 minutes earlier, starting about a week out. Not the night before. A body that has been going to bed at 9:30 all summer cannot suddenly fall asleep at 7:45 because we decided it’s a school night now. Fifteen minutes a day is small enough that nobody fights you on it.

The night before, walk through the whole day out loud. Where they hang their backpack, who their teacher is, what happens at lunch, who is picking them up. Kids are not nervous about school. They’re nervous about not knowing. Take the not knowing away and most of the nerves go with it.

Prep the night before together instead of doing it all for them. Yes, it is faster if I pack the lunch and pick the outfit while they watch a show. But them physically putting their own water bottle in their own backpack is what makes the morning feel like something they’re in charge of instead of something happening to them.

Tell them the after school plan before they leave the house. This is the one I forget the most. A kid who doesn’t know if they’re getting picked up or going to a friend’s house or going to practice spends part of their day wondering instead of learning. Say it in the morning so it’s already answered.

Leave one small note where they’ll find it. Lunchbox, mirror, backpack pocket. It takes eight seconds and my kids have kept some of them. That’s it, no laminating required.

And here’s the part I’ll say as the most type B mom you know: none of this is Pinterest. There’s no printable, no color coded system, no perfect morning. It’s just doing five small things a week early instead of trying to fix everything at 7am on day one.

Save this so you have it the week school starts, and send it to a mom who’s already dreading that first morning.

one more that didn’t fit in the slides: when they’re nervous to try something, “you don’t have to be good at it. you just have to try it.”

none of this is magic. some days everyone still cries, including me. but small phrase swaps changed the temperature in our house more than anything else I’ve tried.

save this for the next long day. and if you’re a mom who’s trying, you belong here 🤍

you don’t need the big trip or the perfect summer. you need one little thing you do on purpose, over and over, until it becomes “we always…” pick one from this list and just start. that’s the whole thing.

save this so you don’t lose it, and send it to a mom friend who’s been feeling like she needs to do more. she doesn’t. she just needs one of these.