Back-to-School Feast

One of my favorite family traditions is our back-to-school feast and theme. Every year, usually the night before school starts, we have a little "feast" and introduce a new theme for our family.  Since it is their feast my kids get to decide the menu and I set the table nicely and display our new theme.  This year they chose monkey bread pizza, a fruit tray, and some apple cider from the nearby orchard.

My oldest could hardly wait to discover the new theme!  He kept trying to sneak a peak at what I was working on.  Our theme this year is "Suit up!"   We plan on talking about knights and armor--putting on the armor of God and also acting like a knight (being a good friend, acting like a gentleman, etc).

This year I made little place mats for each boy to remind them of our theme.

And I also made some keychains out of shrinky dinks.  My boys put the keychains on their backpack as a daily reminder of how to act.  

This little tradition of ours gets everyone excited for school and gives us a good focus for the school year.  I'd love for you to share your back-to-school traditions!