Back to School!

Most of us have had the last eight weeks at home.  Enjoying a sleep in if we are a bus traveller and may be spending the day in our PJ’s and slippers!  Our world has been different. Catching up with friends has been different over the past few months, we may have been very social via Facetime, Zoom or using House Party,  at various times.  

Now we are moving back to school and we will be going on holidays in a few short weeks. There will be changes to routine including trying to find uniforms and schoolbooks.  Routines at school may have changed as well.  We have lost the time in the morning that we had while we were studying at home.  We now need to get up, get dressed, have breakfast and make it to the bus to get to school.  Or, we may have to factor in time to walk or drive to school.  

How do we get back into a routine?  Who can help us?  Is it all too hard! We need to work out:

- What is important to you to do in the morning or what can be done after school?

- What you need to do to get ready for school.

In the morning this might be having a shower, doing your hair, doing a skin care routine and eating breakfast. It might be needing to catch up with friends before school, making lunch, or it could be organising siblings to get to their school and then getting to school yourself. You might have responsibilities at home. For instance, looking after a pet, cleaning your room, doing jobs around the house, a part-time job or training for sporting commitments.  Do these things need to be done in the morning, or can they be done after school?

So, it may be helpful for you to think about a routine to keep you on track to be organised and get to school on time.

It might be something like this:

7am – 8am wake up, have breakfast, get dressed/have a shower, check in with your friends.  Some people may need to break this down more and allocate time to work out how long its going to take for them to get ready to leave for school.

In working out a routine you need to work out how long things take.  For some it might take 5 minutes to have a shower, for others it might be 20 minutes to take a shower. Something simple like the table below may help:

You may even want to think about a routine at night so that you can be organised in the morning. This might look like: Knowing where your clothes and shoes are for the next day, packing your bag with your PE gear or after school commitments (Sport or a part time Job). Putting your device or computer on charge so it’s ready to go. Organising a drink bottle to take to school. 

Other tips are getting to bed at a decent time.  If you have enough sleep, you will find it easier to get up in the morning.  If you are up late at night and unable to sleep, you will struggle to get out of bed in time the next day.

Waking up: Do you need an alarm? Some people use their mobile phone as their alarm clock. This can be problematic, as the phone will light up at night when you get a notification. Some people have been known to call their friends during the night, or message them and chat.  So, having the phone in your room is not good for a great sleep.  Buy an alarm clock, you can get some cheap ones at most big retailers and they can be as cheap as $7.00. 

If you want to chat about how to set up a routine to get ready for school, chat to your Learning Mentor. 

If you are having issues with your sleep, please speak to a member of the Wellbeing team.