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I’m going to be chatting LIVE on with Kristen Chase on the Motherhood Uncensored Show about books and activities to prepare your little ones for their first year of school, whether it’s preschool, pre-K, or kindergarten. The show is on Wednesday, July 30 at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT. You can listen to it live at blogtalkradio or you can call in at 646-915-8634 and chat with us.

If you missed it, you can listen to the archived show here.

For a lot of kids the first day of school is scary. Reading books and talking about school can help calm their fears. Here are some books and activities you can do with your child to get the discussion started.

Books

• Kevin Goes to School (Kane/Miller) – Belgian author Liesbert Slegers’s character Kevin and his friend Ali help make the transition to school less frightening.
• Something for School (Available in August 2008 from Kane/Miller Book Publishers) It’s the first day of kindergarten, and Yoon’s new teacher and classmates mistake her for a boy. Oh no! This book is about starting school and making friends instead of assumptions. By Korean author Hyun Young Lee.
• Little School (Kane/Miller) Australian author Beth Norling gives readers a realistic account of preschool life so your preschooler knows exactly what to expect when they start.
• Tibili: The Little Boy Who Didn’t Want to Go to School (Kane/Miller) French author Marie Léonard set a story of a reluctant first-time school-goer in Africa. Also available in Spanish and French.
•  First Day Jitters (Charlesbridge) Author Julie Danneberg’s character Sarah Jane is scared and doesn’t want to start over at a new school. With prodding from her father, Sarah Jane reluctantly goes off to school. She is quickly befriended by Mrs. Burton, who helps calm her nerves. Also available in Spanish.
• Kindergarten Countdown (Random House) By Anna Jane Hays and illustrated by Lind Davick. A little girl named Lucy counts off the days by naming what she’ll do in kindergarten, what she’ll wear, and what she’ll learn. (Read my review of Kindergarten Countdown.)

For more book ideas see my post Back to school book roundup.

Activities

Here are some links to articles that can help you prepare your child for that scary first day of school:

• First-day jitters: starting preschool by Isadora Fox, Ilisa Cohen and Diane Debrovner of Parents.com
• Cures for First-Day Jitters - by the American School Counselor Association
• Preparing for the First Days of School by Ellen Booth Church of Scholastic Parent
• 10 Steps for a First Trip to School from Scholastic Parent
• Click here for some school lunch ideas.

All you have to do is enter the Kimberly-Clark Rock Your School Sweepstakes!

Kimberly-Clark, the folks who make Huggies and Kleenex, are working with Box Tops for Education to give parents a chance to win 100,000 Bonus Box Tops, plus an exclusive concert featuring Radio Disney star Jordan Pruitt for their child’s school.

If you have school-aged kids, you know that Box Tops for Education is a program dedicated to helping schools raise money to develop programs, purchase books, and buy school supplies. I’m always on the lookout for those little labels on the products we buy, and have been collecting them all summer. Now that Lucie is starting kindergarten in August, I’ll have two classrooms to collect them for.

Last year our school’s teachers earned enough to buy a die-cutting machine for classroom projects – around $350. Imagine winning this prize for child’s school - 100,000 Bonus Box Tops are equivalent to $10,000! Here are some of they could buy with that money:

• 20 wireless-ready laptops.
• Enough No. 2 pencils so that when laid end to end they would stretch across the length of more than 145 football fields.
• An educational class trip for 20 students including airfare, hotel accommodations and museum admission.

Wow! Here are some of the details. To learn more go to the Rock Your School Sweepstakes FAQs page. Or you can click here to see the official rules.

• If you are a legal resident of the United States,18 years or older, a parent/legal guardian of a child in grades K-8, and your child attends a school located within the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, you are eligible to enter this sweepstakes.
• Entries are limited to one entry, per person, per day, with a maximum of 80 entries per person throughout the sweepstakes
• Parents or legal guardians of students in grades K through 8 can enter the sweepstakes daily June 28 through September 15 online at www.RockBacktoSchool.com. Winners will be selected at random from all eligible entries on or around September 22.

Look for Box Tops on specially marked packages of participating Kimberly-Clark brands like Huggies, Cottonelle and Kleenex along with many other participating products.

For more information on how to collect box tops, you can visit BoxTops4Education.com. Check out the Box Tops for Education recipe page, too.

Since the price of gas has almost doubled since last year, I’m seriously considering using EZSchoolSupplies.com to shop online for my children’s school supplies. Last year, I must have driven to the various office supply and discount stores at least a half dozen times. With each trip being over 30 miles round trip and taking over 40 minutes, I can’t do go through that again without major damage to my patience and wallet. In fact, now that Nathan and Lucie have discovered the shredders at Staples, it’s practically self-inflicted torture!

Shop Online with EZSchoolSupplies.com

Denver-based EZSchoolSupplies.com has been doing business with moms online for five years. Their mission is to make life easy for moms when they are shopping for school supplies.

They provide this service to thousands of schools and parents across the country. Mothers love them because they can order online the exact school supplies requested by the school or the teachers for each specific grade level and have them delivered right to their home.

Worried that they won’t have exactly what your child’s teacher or school wants? Don’t worry! EZSchoolSupplies.com offers over 26,000 brand name items on their website.

Raise Money for Your School with EZSchoolSupplies.com

Not only can you shop for school supplies online with EZSchoolSupplies.com, you can help your school earn cash or supplies. Every organization that enrolls with EZSchoolSupplies.com will receive a 10% donation of the total net sales. See their FAQs page for more information on how this program works

Can EZSchoolSupplies.com Really Save Me Money?

EZSchoolSupplies.com’s prices are competitive with stores like Target and Wal-mart. Still, certain individual items might be slightly higher. However, with gas prices being so high and considering that moms have limited time to shop and help out their children’s schools, I can’t think of a smarter service. Visit EZSchoolSupplies.com’s website today!

In your area it may be too early for winter coats, hats, scarves and mittens. (It’s gotten cool enough here for sweatshirts in the morning.) With the start of school, we need to remind our kids not to lose their stuff, and A Mountain of Mittens by Lynn Plourde and illustrated by Mitch Vane is a great way to do this.

Honestly, if Nathan loses his gloves every week this year, I’m going to leave him in the lost and found box. Understandably, it was Lucie who really loved A Mountain of Mittens, especially the picture of Molly’s parents who look a lot like my husband and me. Here’s a story description:

Every morning Molly’s parents remind her to come home after school with her mittens, and every day Molly forgets. Nothing works — not Velcro, not crochet chains, not even duct tape! But, Molly is not alone. All the kids at school forget, and soon there is a mountain of mittens in lost-and-found that has grown out of control.

The Charlesbridge website has a great activity for collecting lost mittens, hats, coats and scarves to help kids in need. Your school or scouts probably already has an annual coat drive. A great way to announce and promote the drive would be a short storytime reading A Mountain of Mittens. The cost of admission would be a gently used warm winter clothing item.

Afterwards, take a picture of all the items you collected, and send it to trademarketing@charlesbridge.com. They may post it on their website!

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It must be the start of school, because I’ve never seen so many cool book and reading related activities going on. Here’s a roundup:

• The 40th anniversary of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders: You can join the online book discussion this month at the Barnes & Noble kid lit book club site.
• September 8 is International Literacy Day: International Literacy Day is a timely reminder to the world about the importance of literacy for individuals, families, communities and whole societies. The official celebration includes the awarding of the 2007 UNESCO literacy prizes to laureates from China, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, the United Republic of Tanzania, and the United States of America. RIF (Reading is Fundamental) and Colgate’s Healthy Habits/Healthy Bed: The two organizations have joined forces to get wash, brush and read at bedtime. The website features tips for parents and activities for kids including starring in your own bedtime story. You can customize and create an adventure story online, then print it out for your child to keep. If you have kids who don’t like to brush their teeth, you may want to create a Healthy Habits Nightly Log.
• September 20 is Jumpstart’s Read for the Record: Jumpstart is asking Americans to support early education opportunities by reading The Story of Ferdinand together on September 20, 2007. They’re trying to break the record for the largest shared reading experience ever, which was set by 150,000 people on August 24, 2006 during the inaugural year of Jumpstart’s Read for the Record campaign.

Now what’s on the menu for lunch?

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