To celebrate a new school year, we decided to have a Back To School Family Night.  I can’t believe I have a 3rd grader, a 2nd grader and a Pre-Ker.  Seriously? Where are the years going?

I had a lot of fun with this family night. It was pretty simple, but there is beauty is simplicity because it allows us to just have fun together.

I had been looking for props for decor while back to school shopping and hit up the Dollar Spot at Target. I was able to get some nameplates, flash cards and abc bingo. I also got a couple of buckets to use for their lunch.  Brown bags would have worked just as well, but this made it cuter!

We started out by making Edible Crayons. Word to the wise….invest in colored candy melts. Adding food coloring and mixing caused the candy coating to harden really fast. Also, do one one color at a time so your candy coating doesn’t harden on you before you are done.

These were yummy and really simple. I loved the crayon wrappers! We made up a pencil box filled with these for Parker and Emery’s teachers. We also added a SLAM, which is basically a healthier 5 hour energy! We thought they might need it and we are not above a little sucking up to the  new teachers by the new kids!

For decor, I just used….you guessed it….school supplies! The girls decorated the table and Bradley set out everyone’s name cards.

For lunch, we filled their lunch buckets and put a cute little card on it. I found some great free printables for school at this site.

During dinner, we went over our goals for the next year, some in the class, some at home. We discussed our morning chores and I had printed out morning chore cards for them to have to refer to

as we are getting ready in the mornings. We start earlier, so we need all the help we can get to arrive at school on time! Hopefully, this will cut down on any stress we might encounter.

For our devotional, Jason read Hebrews 3:17 and Titus 3:1, which state:

Hebrews 13:17

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

and

Titus 3:1 NIV

Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good,

We talked about how we have prayed for their teachers and are confident that God has placed them with the person they are supposed to be with this year. We talked about obedience and why we choose obedience. We also talked about why God places authorities over us and we want them to bring joy to their teachers by their obedience.  A big saying we have at our house is “Obedience brings blessings and disobedience brings consequences.” It was good to remind our kids that obedience is not just to act correctly but is about having a heart that wants to please God because He deserves it!

We rounded out the night with a few, old school, playground games.

A little four square…

Please observe the tie-dye explosion, which were presents from my parentals…

Please notice that all but one of my children are ahead of me…I didn’t make it to 4..

Bradley, the four year old, did make it to #4.

Parker with her mad skilz

Emery, the kid who makes everything look girly, dancy and fancy.

We also played a little GOTCHA, with the parents scoring our kids…we don’t show mercy!

We had a good night before school, Back to School Night!