We did our best to build up our kids immune system over this last year while quarantining and social distancing from school and summer camp. While we are still keeping up with our efforts, realistically we understood the kids would come home not feeling well at some point this school year.

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Our Kindergartener came home with a runny nose the first full week of school. She told me that her classmate had one and sneezed all the time. We kept our daughter home to clear her all up, but soon after she came home with a tummy ache. Like you, we can’t control how clean the school and classrooms are, but we can do our part at home. This is what what we are doing and praying that it will help to keep our children healthy and well this school year.

Sanitize Everything!

We use Lysol or Microban 24 spray to disinfect both backpacks and our daughters lunch bag every day. It also helps to use disinfectant wipes to remove stains, dirt, or a deep clean those bags. If your child’s backpack is machine washable I recommend that you place it into your washing machine on a gentle cycle one weekend a month.

Reinforce Good Hand Washing!

My daughter and I worked on this all summer long. I taught her the old trick of singing the “ABC” song while scrubbing all of those hand germs away. We keep hand sanitizer and hand wipes as much as possible. If you run low on hand sanitizer simply add some alcohol to your existing hand sanitizer bottle and it will work perfectly. It’s also helpful to remind our kids to use a paper towel to turn the faucet off and when exiting a public restroom to avoid touching the germs all over again.

Change Your Clothes!

This is also an old school idea that many of us were familiar with as children. Many of us were instructed to go and put on our play clothes when we came home from school. This advice wasn’t to just keep us from damaging our nice school clothes, but also because we have brought home every germ that could attach itself to us.

I like to wash my family’s laundry in vinegar, the Clorox laundry sanitizer, and Lysol laundry sanitizer solution. I like that you can use cold or semi-warm settings and still sanitize your clothes, towels, and other machine washable items.

Change Your Face Masks!

Changing your face masks daily doesn’t just help to prevent “maskne”, but it’s also helpful for keeping yourself from getting ill. Wearing masks does the job of protecting us against airborne germs, but it needs to be cleaned or replaced daily. Think of it like this, you are putting back on yesterday’s germ exposure every time you put it back on a different day. Yuck! Kids do a good job at dropping their masks, forgetting their masks, sneezing in their masks, and coughing in their masks everyday.

I thought it would be helpful to have my daughter wear a lanyard with her mask on school days. Using a lanyard keeps her from having to lay her mask down on the table in the cafeteria and from falling off when she’s using the restroom. Making your own lanyard is very simple and will cost you as little as $3. You will need lobster clips of your choice, ribbon or any necklace type fabric and that’s it! Here is my D.I.Y. mask lanyard tutorial. It begins at the 4:41 mark.

Have a Safe & Fun School Year!