31 Back to School Hacks for 2024-2025

Back-to-school season is one of the busiest times of the year. 

Everybody in your house is likely preparing for a big shift. A new classroom, a new routine, and new friends may be just a few of the changes on the horizon. 

Even you as the parent may be preparing for a new pickup line or new teachers to meet and communicate with. 

While the change can be a bit overwhelming or scary, there are ways to set your family up for success! 

Getting organized and having a plan for the new school year can make all the difference in feeling ready to tackle the year ahead. 

We’ve compiled a list of all of our favorite tips, tricks, and hacks to make this school year the best one yet! 

31 Back to School Hacks for 2024-2025

These back-to-school hacks are separated into four sections for easy reference: lunch and snacks, supplies and homework, home organization and new routines. If you have a specific area you need help getting ready for, skip ahead to that section!

Let's dive in!

Lunch and Snacks

Planning and packing lunch and snacks every single day can quickly become a dreaded chore. 

These hacks can help make packing easier and more fun. With the right systems, this task can even become one that your child enjoys doing for themselves!

1. Keep all your lunch supplies in one place. Whether this means a dedicated cupboard in the kitchen or a tote in the pantry that gets pulled out, having all the food, plates, utensils, and water bottles in one place makes packing a breeze. 
2. Pack the night before. If your mornings feel rushed and stressed, the last thing you want to be doing is trying to pack lunches. Add packing lunches to your nightly routine and enjoy a little more breathing room each morning. This also helps uneaten food from getting left in the lunchbox overnight and making for a smelly cleanup job. 
3. Set up an assembly line with siblings. Make lunch box packing a family event! Get out enough food for each of your kids and assign one food to each sibling. You’ll have everyones’ lunches packed in no time.
4. Don’t forget the water bottles. If you decide to pack lunches the night before, fill up your child’s water bottle or cup and have it ready to grab out of the fridge on the way out the door. 
5. Meal plan for lunches. You might already make a meal plan for your supper meals. So why not meal plan for lunch too? This prevents stress from picking out what to send for lunch each day and keeps your child from getting bored with eating similar lunches on a rotation. 
6. Make it fun! - If your child is a little nervous about school or you just want to brighten their day, try adding notes to their lunch box. Or have your children write notes to one another. You can also try other fun touches like adding googly eyes to their food containers or cutting their food into fun shapes. 
7. Freeze drinks so they double as an ice pack. If your child’s lunch box is a little small for everything they want to bring for lunch, ditching the ice pack and using their drink instead is a great back to school hack. 
8. Make your own frozen sandwiches. Many kids love the frozen sandwiches you can buy at the store. But have you ever thought about making your own frozen sandwiches? You can make them with your child’s favorite ingredients instead of the typical peanut butter and jelly. And it’s usually cheaper too! 
9. Buy two sets of supplies. Consider buying two complete sets of everything that your child takes in their lunch. Everything from the lunchbox to the containers to the utensils. Then, you can always have one set clean and ready for packing in the evening.  
10. Have healthy grab-and-go breakfast options. Start your child’s day off right with nutritious options that are quick and easy. Some ideas are breakfast burritos, breakfast sandwiches or fruit. 

While your child may dread coming home and doing homework some days, there are ways to make it more fun and less stressful. Here are a few to try this school year. 

1. Make a pickup order to get all your school supplies at once. If the idea of going to the store with all your kids in tow to pick out school supplies is not the most exciting, make a store pickup order instead. 
2. Label, label, label Label every single thing that your child will take to school. Think shoes, hats, backpacks, glasses, jackets, water bottles, pencil bags and other school supplies. Use clear contact paper over labels to help them last longer.
3. Create a homework supply cart. Stock a rolling cart with all the supplies needed to do homework. You can roll it out when it’s homework time and put it all away when your children are done. Some parents take the organization to the next level by assigning each level of the cart to one of their children. 
4. Use a backpack mail system. Put a large manila envelope or folder in your child’s backpack so papers don’t get smashed.
5. Pre-pack a bag for after school activities. Depending on the activity and supplies needed, you can put a small make up bag with what they need in their backpack. Or you can pack a separate bag if necessary. 
6. Put clipboards in the car to get a headstart on homework. If you have a long wait in the pick up line for other siblings or a lengthy ride home, make that time homework time. Add clipboards to use as desks and keep a pencil bag of supplies for easy access. 

If you want to make sure that you’ve covered everything your child needs to have a great year, check out our Back To School Checklist. 

Home Organization

Keeping your child’s school supplies organized (and not lost!) at home is key to a smooth school year. Here are some tips for making your home operate like a well-oiled machine this school year!

1. Create a drop zone. Have a designated place for all the backpacks, lunch pails, water bottles, homework, teacher correspondence and other papers to go. It often works best for this place to be right by the door so that there’s not time to get distracted.
2. Plan outfits in advance. Take some of the stress out of getting ready in the morning by planning out your child’s clothes in advance. You could do this the night before or over the weekend for the whole week ahead. 
3. Hang a checklist on the back door. Have a list of supplies each child needs before they leave for school. You can even laminate it and have a dry erase marker nearby for each child to check off items as they put them in their backpack. 
4. Make a charging station for all devices. Having one central place for electronics makes it easy to check and make sure they are all accounted for and charging each night. 
5. Take a picture to tidy up. If you have specific spaces that you want tidied up in a certain way, take a picture and post it next to the space. Then your child can reference as they clean up and can know exactly what their goal is. 
6.  Use a chalkboard calendar. You can use this rotating calendar for sports, recitals, school days off and any other event you need to keep track of. 
7. Separate the laundry. Designate a separate hamper for school clothes so you can keep them together throughout the wash cycle.
8. Organized by child. If you have multiple school age children, you may find that some organizing and cleaning systems work better if you organize for each child. It’s okay to have multiple systems if one works better for one child and another works better for your other child. 
9. Clean out papers and supplies. At the end of each quarter, take the time to clean out papers and school supplies that are no longer needed or usable. This ensures that no papers are missing and your child is ready to learn all school year long.

A new school year often means a much different routine than the summer. And it may even mean a different routine than the prior year. 

There are lots of tools and tricks that help your whole family adjust to the new routine as you settle into fall. 

1. Get ready on time with a color-coded clock. DIY your own color-coded clock by taking apart a cheap white clock and color in the minute marks to indicate different activities. Then, create a legend that lets your child know what each color means. 
2. Use an after school routine chart. Create a check off chart for each task that your child needs to do after school. This way you don’t need to ask multiple times what they’ve gotten done. A quick glance at the chart will tell you. 
3. Go over the weekly schedule. When is baseball practice? Who is picking up who after school? What nights is dinner going to earlier because of activities? Call a family meeting and go over everyone’s new weekly activities. Bonus points if you put together a chart to visually show everyone’s schedules!
4. Add a lock screen schedule. Set a picture of your child’s school schedule as a lock screen on their phone. This way it is quick and easy to reference. 
5. Use a reminder bracelet.  If you have something that you need your child to remember to do while at school, make them a reminder bracelet before they head out the door. Write the task on a strip of paper then tape the strip around their wrist. 
6. Create a study system. Make a plan for how to best structure study time at your house. Maybe certain nights of the week can be dedicated to certain subjects. Or your child can commit ten minutes per subject before calling it for the night. 

For more resources to make this the best school year ever, head over to our Back To School Hub.

If you’re looking to level up your child’s school year even more, Prodigy Math and Prodigy English is the way to do it.

Prodigy Math takes your child on a game-based learning experience that helps them master math concepts through personalized adventures and quests. 

It makes math practice fun and engaging, transforming a subject that many find challenging into a game that they can’t wait to keep playing.

Prodigy English focuses on developing literacy skills through immersive gameplay . Children build their own worlds and embark on exciting quests, all while improving their reading, writing, and comprehension skills. 

Working behind-the-scenes is an algorithm that sees all of your child’s skills and adjusts the game to teach them exactly what they need to know.

So if your child needs more math and English practice at home, but you don’t know exactly what to teach them, Prodigy is the ultimate back to school hack. 

Best of all, it’s free to get started!