Start a First Day of School Breakfast Tradition

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It’s back to school time! Today I’m sharing one of our favorite traditions this time of year — the first day of school breakfast.

First Day of School Breakfast Component 1 – Food!

For this tradition, you’ll need something that will hold a candle (spoiler alert for component 2!). We usually go with muffins, but I think pancakes would work well, too.

If you want to go the homemade route, keep in mind that muffins and pancakes both freeze beautifully.

That means you can actually prepare your first-day-of-school muffins or pancakes days or weeks ahead of time.

Then, on that exciting but busy morning, you can just pull breakfast out of the freezer. Pop it in the microwave to warm it up and voila! Good as freshly baked.

Better than freshly baked, actually, because so much less stress!

You’ll be making sure kids stay on task getting dressed and brushing teeth and combing hair and packing backpacks…you don’t have want to add elaborate food prep to the agenda!

And on that note, keep in mind you don’t have to go the homemade route!

If you never buy delightfully sugar-laden chocolate chip muffins (or Eggo frozen pancakes, if you’re going that direction), those will be equally special for your kiddos.

Whatever breakfast item you choose, try to make it worth repeating. Part of the fun of traditions is the specific details that kids come to know and love.

Our muffins always include chocolate in some form — banana chocolate chip a couple years ago, chocolate muffins with chocolate chips last year.

Because c’mon — what says “hey, this is a special occasion!” better than chocolate for breakfast? That’s correct, nothing. 🙂

First-Day-of-School Breakfast Component 2 – Candle!

Next, grab a birthday candle and stick it in the muffin/pancake.

I’ve usually used just a single birthday candle and it’s worked great. But it occurred to me it might also be fun to use number candles that correspond to the grade they’re starting. Or the individual number of candles that corresponds to the grade (e.g. four candles for fourth grade).

Whatever strikes your fancy!

(Prior to first grade, you could grab a letter K for kindergarten from a set like this one, or find additional letter candles to spell out “PRE-K” if your little one is starting preschool. That seems like overkill to me, though — a simple birthday candle has done the trick just fine for us).

First-Day-of-School Breakfast Component 3 – Song and Wish!

Once you have your muffin/pancake plated and candled, call your child to the table.

Also call all other family members to the table! You’re doing as you would when lighting the candles on a birthday cake.

Then lead your crew in a rousing rendition of “Happy First Day”! (sung to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” of course):