Smooth Transition from Summer to Fall Routines for Kindergartners

This August, you're getting ready to send your child to kindergarten. You've bought school supplies, new tennis shoes and fall clothes to grow into. The other and no less important part of getting ready for school is to establish a school routine.

Before you start enforcing a school routine, take time to think about what needs to be done in the morning and what can be done the night before. If your child likes to chose what she's going to wear, consider picking out the outfit and accessories the night before. This saves time because you can avoid both a fight over the actual clothes and a hassle to find the matching tights, belt or shoes. It also ensures that the desired outfit is clean and ready to wear.

Another way to save time is to pack lunches and backpacks the night before. Before bedtime, you can make sure that your kindergartner has completed paperwork, show and tell items or whatever else she'll need that day packed and in a designated spot to grab on the way out the door.

Once you've decided what tasks are to be done the night before, observe your child's Saturday morning routine and use that as a guide to plan a school day routine. For example, if your child prefers to lie in bed for a few minutes after waking up or likes to have 10 minutes of play time before breakfast, make sure to build those activities into the school day routine. Allow time for big delays such as having to change clothes because of a spill and small delays from children's natural tendency to dawdle.

Now that you know how much time you'll need to get your child ready for the bus or to leave for school, and you know how much sleep your child needs, you can set a bedtime and a wake up time. Gently ease into these times by starting to wake your child up 15 minutes early and tucking her in 15 minutes early for a few days. Gradually keeping moving wake up and bedtimes by 15 minutes until you are on the schedule that you had decided upon. This can take a few weeks, so plan to start well ahead of the actual school year.

While you adjust your child's sleep schedule, be sure to talk to your child about school starting and about the steps of the routine. Start actually practicing the routine a few days before school starts to get your child in the habit of picking out clothes, putting backpacks in the same designated place and the other parts of the routine so that when the first day of school arrives, you can get your child to school on time.