Back to School Eve Dinner

Ava started Kindergarten this week (more on that tomorrow) so the night before we had a little 'Back to School Eve' dinner in her honor. 

This is an idea I saw from fellow blogger Erin of Bringing Up Burns. Erin's been doing these for years for her children and every year I read about them I'm so inspired and couldn't wait to one day do this for my own children. 

The basic idea of this dinner is to pick a theme for the school year, host a dinner and spend time together as a family talking about the upcoming school year. You can see all Erin's posts about Back to School Eve dinners here. 

I took the time to plan out a table scape using everything I already had in my home. Book pages lined the center of the table. I used some letter, number and color flash cards and layered them on top. And then placed two apples on cupcake stands. 

We had a simple dinner, drank sweet tea and chatted about the theme for the year we choose for Ava. 

We choose the theme: BE BRAVE.

This Summer she's been so brave. Learning to swim, holding her breath under water and swimming, going down the slides all by herself at the water park. It's been a summer of transition for our family with a new home and a new church and she's handled all of them with bravery and grace. 

We talked a lot about this concept and how that will help her as she enters kinder this year.

We also took some time to speak some words of encouragement over her and prayed for her as she was starting school the very next day.

I also made this fun little sheet of questions and we took the time to ask her each one and write down the answers. I plan on making the same list of questions each year and keeping them all in a binder to look back on during high school graduation. I'm sappy like that! 

Our simple back to school eve dinner turned out to be so much fun, and we can't wait to add this to our yearly traditions. 

What are some of your favorite back to school traditions? Tell me in the comments below.