For the next several days, I’m going to be sharing some Back to School tips for parents. These tips will be for current high school parents and those parents whose students are heading off to college.
Today’s tips are for parents of current college students, especially those who are heading to college for the first time.
Continue reading Back to School: Preparing for Upcoming College Expenses
My favorite lines from “You’ve Got Mail” are:
“Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
Newly sharpened pencils always remind me of back to school days. And when fall comes around, I think about that movie (mostly wishing I were in New York in the fall!); but it also reminds of the promise and expectation of a new school year.
Armed with the right online tools, parents and students can face the new year with anticipation and promise. Having the right tools can mean the difference between organization and frustration. These tools would help students succeed as they enter college. Here are some excellent links that I shared with my newsletter subscribers today that I thought you might find helpful:
Continue reading It’s Back to School Time—Resources for Parents and Students
Every parent knows just what a big deal it is when their child goes to college. Months, if not years of work go into getting the grades their specific college desires. You will probably find that the last few exams are fraught with tension as your teenager knuckles down for that final push. But once result day comes round, all that uncertainty disappears. Half of the torture is the not knowing – and chances are if your teenager studied hard, they will have no problem getting into the college of their choice. It might seem that at this point, the whole family has a chance to relax, right? Wrong! Once the results are in, the hard work is only beginning. Getting your child prepared for college involves a lot of different things, from mental preparation right down to the books they will need. It can sometimes seem that the checklist goes on forever – and you’re still bound to forget SOMETHING. To make things easier, here are a few things your child won’t be able to manage without at college, so make sure you pack these first!
Let’s face it: it’s college, and your kid is going to be taking a LOT of notes. At least, you hope they are going to be taking lots of notes! With most of their time filled with lectures and seminars, they will need to make sure they are writing down and memorizing all the correct information they need to pass their classes. Forget memorizing it – it might sound like a good idea at the time, but it simply isn’t going to happen by watching one PowerPoint presentation. Getting your soon to be student prepped with a lot of writing equipment will act as a good incentive to make them take their college lectures seriously. In order to make it easier, buy stationery online so it all arrives in one big package.
It is important to prepare your teenager for the reality of college life. Their dorm is unlikely to be anything like the sumptuous bedroom they have enjoyed at home. College dorms can be notoriously bare and depressing, as well as being cold! So make sure your child takes plenty of soft furnishing to make the place feel like home. A fluffy rug for them to put their feet on when getting out of bed doesn’t sound like that big of a deal – but it’s the little things like that which can make all the difference.
All of my Facebook friends are posting back to school pictures of their kids. Since my kids are grown, here’s a shot of my grandson on his first day of preschool. His mother was a handful when school started. Mostly because she had definite opinions on what she wanted to wear and the mornings became battlegrounds over her clothes choices. It wasn’t until a very wise woman told me, “Let her pick her clothes out at night and lay them out for the next day.” Bingo. No more battles in the morning over clothing.
Getting back into the routine for school can be hard after summer vacation. There are lunches to pack, carpools to organize, teacher/parent conferences to attend and after school activities. The only way to remain sane and navigate all the stress is to get back into a routine utilizing these time-tested strategies:
You are going to be inundated with papers and notices. You’re going to have emails from teachers and school staff. You’re going to have to keep track of dates and deadlines. If you have a college-bound teen, you’re going to get college brochures and letters in the mail.
Part of getting organized is something our mothers used to tell us: a place for everything and everything in its place. Establish a landing zone and display a large wall calendar that will help you stay on top of the dates, deadlines, and after school activities.
Watch this short video for 8 steps for staying organized.
As I mentioned earlier, we made it a practice to prepare for the next day. Make sure all homework is done, all permission slips are signed, all clothes are chosen, and all lunches are ready to go. Preparing in advance alleviates morning chaos and assures that your student is sent to school with everything they need for the day.
Part of establishing a routine is sticking to the schedule. Homework should be done at the same time every afternoon or evening. Baths and normal bedtime routine should stay fairly similar from night to night. Kids react positively to routines. Chaos in the home transfers to chaos at school
Ready Wendy’s post: 3 Sure-fire Words to Adjust to New Routines
________________________
Wednesday’s child may be full of woe but Wednesday’s Parent can substitute action for anxiety. Each Wednesday Wendy and I will provide parent tips to get and keep your student on the college track. It’s never too late or too early to start!
The bonus is on the fourth Wednesday of each month when Wendy and I will host Twitter chat #CampusChat at 9pm ET/6pm PT. We will feature an expert on a topic of interest for parents of the college-bound.
Wednesday’s Parent will give twice the info and double the blog posts on critical parenting issues by clicking on the link at the end of the article from parentingforcollege to pocsmom.com and vice versa.
Here’s a great app for students (and parents) for the iPad and Android tablets. iAnnotate allows you to read, mark up, and share PDF, DOC, PPT and image files.
iAnnotate’s intuitive interface and customizable set of features make it the “go-to app” for taking notes on lecture slides, annotating important business documents, revising screenplays, grading papers, and much more. Read on to learn about the great capabilities of iAnnotate:
ANNOTATE: Choose from the pen, highlighter, typewriter, stamp, straight-line, note, underline, strikeout, photo, voice recording, and date stamp tools. Copy and paste annotations, even from one document to another.
CUSTOMIZE: Drag and drop the exact tools you need to create custom toolbars for your specific workflow. Switch between toolbars with a swipe, or open the Toolbar Drawer to edit your toolbars.
SCROLL: iAnnotate allows fast, continuous vertical scroll through an entire document. Other apps only let you view one page at a time, but iAnnotate gives you both options.
SEARCH: Use keywords to search the full text or filenames of every document downloaded to your Library, or limit your search to unread, annotated, or favorited documents to refine your results.
NAVIGATE: Open the Navigation Panel to explore your documents by thumbnails, bookmarks, annotations, or search results, and perform other common actions.
MULTITASK: iAnnotate lets you have up to eight documents open at once, and easily navigate between them for tabbed reading.
IMPORT: Connect with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive or WebDAV, use iTunes file sharing, or open PDFs directly from email or the Web.
MANAGE: Arrange documents by folders and sort contents by date added, date last opened, or alphabetical order.
CREATE: Create brand new PDFs with blank, lined, or graph-paper pages.
MODIFY: Add, delete, rotate, and rearrange pages in your documents.
FLATTEN: Compress your annotations onto the document to prevent modification. This is useful for preserving signatures or for preventing recipients from deleting or changing your annotations.
SHARE: Annotations made in iAnnotate are fully integrated into the PDF and can be viewed and edited in external PDF readers like Adobe Acrobat or Mac Preview.
SUMMARIZE: Forward text summaries of a document’s annotations in the body of an email. Summaries include the type of each annotation, relevant page numbers, and marked-up text.
SECURE: Full support for the iOS Data Protection and Keychain functions.
This app usually sells for $9.99 but iAnnotate has given me 5 FREE coupon codes to use in a Back to School giveaway. Just leave a comment here, like my Facebook page, or tweet about the giveaway on Twitter.
In the spirit of Back to School and in my desire to help parents prepare their teens for college, I’m offering a special. 60% off my regular price–$59! That’s right–60% off. It’s a bargain; and who doesn’t like bargains?
Here’s what you will be getting:
(PDF FILE WITH CLICKABLE LINKS)
With competition for college becoming more intense and the college admissions officers looking at each application and analyzing its merits, it makes sense to give your college-bound teen every opportunity available.
I created the Parents Countdown to College Crash Course because:
No test or licensing is required to offer such services, and there is no way to evaluate the counselors’ often extravagant claims of success or experience. And Ms. Duff’s asking price, though higher than many, is eclipsed by those of competitors who may charge upwards of $40,000 —more than a year’s tuition at many colleges.
Believe me, I couldn’t afford that kind of money when I was helping my kids with the college process, and I’m sure you can’t either.
BUT, if I had found someone that offered everything I needed in one CRASH COURSE for a FRACTION of the cost of those high-priced counselors, I would have JUMPED at the BARGAIN!
For ONE all-inclusive price you will receive:
Don’t make the mistake of being unprepared and scrambling around senior year trying to help your college-bound teen apply to colleges. Be a smart parent and prepare in advance. The best time to start with the college prep process is the 8th grade. But if you’re running behind, my Crash Course will help you catch up!
Snag this discounted price before the sale ends
It’s a BARGAIN at $59 (60% off my regular price)!
