Craft it: Calm-Down Jar

Fill a small jar three-quarters full with warm water, stir in a few tablespoons of glitter glue, add a spoonful of loose glitter, top it off, and seal it tight. Now you can shake and watch it settle while taking five slow breaths whenever you need to find some peace.  

Craft it: Pocket Fidget 

No jar handy? Fill a small balloon with flour or rice for a pocket fidget that fits right in a backpack (be sure to tie it closed very well; don’t ask us how we know!). It’s a small, practical answer to school anxiety before the day even begins. 

Craft it: Mood Board 

Grab a small corkboard or magnetic sheet to display in a locker or desk, along with photos, stickers, washi tape, scissors, and mini clothespins or magnets. Cut your board to size, choose three to five things that feel like “you” (photos, doodles, colors, stickers) and attach everything to the board with clothespins, washi tape, or magnets so pieces can be swapped later, then top it off with a title strip like “Locker HQ” or your name in letter stickers for a mood board you can update all year. 

Craft it: Friendship Tags 

Cut small rectangles or circles of cardstock or construction paper, about business-card size, and punch a hole in one corner of each. Decorate one side with your name and a quick doodle of something you love (a hobby, a pet, a favorite snack) and then loop string or ribbon through the hole to turn each card into a tag or bookmark-style trading piece. Make three or four and trade them with new friends as an easy “let’s be friends” icebreaker—a small way to kick off a new connection. 

Craft it: Reading Tracker

Grab a piece of cardstock or an index card and use a ruler to draw a grid, with one box for every book you plan to read (make the box big enough to write a book title inside). Title it “Case Files” or “Books Solved,” then decorate the border with detective doodles like a magnifying glass, footprints, or question marks. Every time you finish a book, color in a box and jot down the title inside, then punch a hole, thread some string through it, and clip it inside a notebook or backpack so it’s always on hand. 

Craft it: DIY No-Sew Pencil Pouch

Lay a sturdy, quart-size zip-top bag flat, then cover the front and back completely with strips of decorative duct tape or fabric tape, overlapping the edges slightly as you go. Fold the tape over the top and bottom edges to seal them, being careful to avoid the zipper track, then trim off any excess with scissors for a clean finish. Fill it with pencils, erasers, and your detective tools (mini magnifying glass optional) for a no-sew pouch that’s ready for casework (and schoolwork!). 

Craft it: Comic-Strip Lunch Notes  

Cut paper into small note-sized squares, then draw a two- or three-panel mini comic strip. Maybe a joke, a doodle, or a “mission” for your friend. Fold it up small and tuck it into a friend’s lunch bag, or trade it at the lunch table for a fun surprise mid-meal (or dessert!). 

Craft it: One-Sheet Mini Zine  

Take one sheet of paper and fold it in half twice one way, then once the other way, following the classic eight-page zine fold. Unfold it flat and cut a slit along the center crease using the standard one-cut zine pattern, then fold the paper in half lengthwise and push the ends in so it forms a little booklet (the cut lets it fold into eight pages), then crease all the pages flat. Fill the pages with a comic story, jokes, or a “day in my life” flip-book to trade with friends. 

Craft it: Comic Journal  

Grab a plain notebook or stapled paper and a ruler, and on each page lightly draw three to four empty comic panels. At the end of each school day, pick one real moment and turn it into a comic strip, adding speech bubbles, sound effects like “RING,” and a drawn version of yourself as the main character. Keep it going all year as a running “graphic novel” of your school life. 

Craft it: Young Inventor’s Notebook

Find another plain notebook and label it “Inventions & Ideas.” Each week, pick one everyday problem—a heavy backpack, a boring lunch, a messy locker—and sketch a simple invention that could fix it, using labels and arrows instead of worrying about perfect drawing. Write one sentence about how it would work, Ada Twist–style (“What if…?”), then flip back through your ideas at the end of the year to see how your thinking grew. 

While kids build their own toolkit, here’s one for the adults supporting them. The Hiveclass BingePass unlocks over 1,500 skills-based tutorials across 20+ course areas in health, wellness, and sports. It’s built for K-12 students, educators, and lifelong learners alike, and classes are in both English and Spanish, all on a single borrow. It’s a steady, practical resource for the season of transitions, whether that’s a new routine, a new sport, or just settling into new habits. 

Moonbug Entertainment SeasonPasses

There’s a SeasonPass for all your Moonbug Entertainment favorites, including CoComelon, Blippi, Morphle, T-Rex Ranch, and Gecko’s Garage. Each SeasonPass includes every episode from a full season of your show. For seven days, you get unlimited watching with just one borrow.  

Smile and Learn BingePass 

Kids ages 3-12 get thousands of interactive games and videos covering school subjects, languages, coding, and even yoga. Everything’s made by educators, so it feels fun instead of like homework (there are eight different languages, too!). You can tweak fonts, difficulty, and reading modes, making it easy for kids with different learning needs to join in. 

The Reading Corner BingePass  

Story time can happen anywhere, at home or on the go! Dive into a huge collection of animated videos made for kids of every age, packed with colorful illustrations and fun music. It’s all available in over 10 languages, including English, Spanish, and French.