This is a funny time of year. My 4 year old is going through his last week of Nursery and we have 6 weeks of fun before he starts Reception. It’s both exciting and sad as we start a new chapter as a family.

With him starting Reception we have a list of essential items to buy. I have really happy memories of the start of a new term. Do you remember shopping for a new school bag and lunch box? My favourite part was always shopping for new stationery, nothing beats the smell of a brand new pencil case, pencils and those strange mathematical things like a set square, which I’m sure I never actually used!

I love buying stationery which is why I was excited to hear that Ryman have launched a brand new website. You can take a look here www.ryman.co.uk. Our local high street is pretty poor for shops so I do a lot of shopping online. Ryman have all the essential stationery that you could need for study, the office or your home. They also sell office furniture and technology, with everything from digital cameras and tablets, to printers and shredders.

Starting school family traditions

I’m thinking perhaps the Back to School Fairy could make a visit over the holidays with some #brandnew essentials for my sons’ school bag. I also thought it might be fun to start some of our own family traditions to commemorate his first day of Reception. So far I’ve come up with :

special back to school breakfast

recording his height

drawing round his hand

asking him a couple of questions – such as favourite film/food/toy

take a photo of him in his nice, clean uniform (because I have a feeling those crisp white shirts won’t last very long!)

Easy DIY pencil holder

We’ve also been trying out some back to school crafts, our favourite was making a pencil holder. We just raided our recycling box for a tin can, made sure it was clean and dry and decorated it with some road track washi tape. Couldn’t be easier!

Let me know if you have any back to school traditions as I’d love to hear them.