Spring semester tends to be the hardest time of the year to keep your teen motivated and driven, because once spring break hits and they can see summer break just within their reach, they want to jump ahead to the last day of school.
Encouraging them to stay on track and keep their grades up can be helped by a few purchases mid-year that reinvigorate and revitalize their tired and weary minds and bodies.
Remember how excited and pumped everyone got at back to school shopping back in September, with fresh pens and pencils, new markers, clean binders and backpacks? Well, you can’t really relive that moment, but a few simple updates will help remind your student that you’re invested in their schoolwork and it’s time for them to kick into gear for these final few months before school’s finally out.
With colleges and state testing and simply final semester grades rapidly approaching, maybe giving them a little incentive to continue doing their best wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world?
- De-Stressing Coloring Book
Coloring books for adults of all ages and for teens have been trending for a while now, because the simple truth behind them is that they’re effective at helping ease stress and find relief from day-to-day activities and stressors.
They alleviate anxiety and function nicely as a simple, mindful, but easy task to complete, that let’s us slow down and take some breaths.
There are plenty of fun, exciting, and engaging color books perfect for your child or teen, once you know what kind of things they’re in to. Encourage them to take a moment for themselves every so often, or to color for 15 minutes between homework assignments during the week.
- Colorful Refillable Water Bottle
These types of sleek, modern, and trendy water bottles have been a hit this year. With bottles like the Kool8 refillable water bottle or Takeya water bottles (check out the Takeya colors, they’re amazing!!!), students can eliminate the need for annoying and irresponsible plastic water bottles that have to be paid for, that make noises, and that don’t last as long as ones like this.
With durable, stainless steel, they’ll handle any drops around campus, and they’re insulated, so chilled water stays nice and cool. They’re easy to refill, and hold 24 ounces, which means you know your child will get the water they need.
- Water Bottle Stickers
As long as we’re looking at what’s trendy, let’s appease them a bit and check out some stickers for their reusable water bottles. Teens and young adults love investing in unique and fun stickers to decorate their bottles with, and it’s become a sign of chic- environmental awareness as well as a great conversational piece. Indulge them and select a couple fun, cute, quirky options that will help them feel like they fit in just a little bit more with their peers and friends. They’ll be excited to return on a Monday morning with their new bottle and fresh stickers to share.
- Erasable Highlighters
Testing season is coming in most states, whether it’s state testing or college and AP testing, so a lot of students are about to get into study-mode and hunker down for hours. Mistakes are bound to happen and there’s no way around that, but let’s make sure they’ve got supplies that even allow for those mistakes in the first place. With erasable highlighters, students can recognize their own errors in notetaking and undue those mistakes quickly and easily. Help them focus on what they need to be focusing on, and finding the right information in that three-inch thick testing guide.
- College Gear
Remind them what they’re working so hard towards! Maybe it’s a family school that grandparents or parents went to, or a dream school of their own, or even just the local football school in your town, but college sports gear is one thing that seems to never go out of style. Here you’ll find any number of major college teams (and some minor ones) and a variety of apparel: t-shirts, hats, tanks, sweatshirts from literally hundreds of college teams across the country. From Michigan, to Carolina, to Georgia, there’s something for basketball, football, baseball, soccer, and other sports offered at most of these schools.
- Medicine balls
If you have a college student in your family, you know the drill: they almost never exercise. Unless they have a reason to. I was recently reading an article on the benefits of medicine balls workouts. Medicine balls are very convenient, durable, portable and versatile. For those who don’t know, medicine balls are about the size of a basketball, very sturdy and provide a full-body workout. There are tens of different physical exercises you can do with them. But most importantly, they don’t take too much space. Give the student in your life a medicine ball. Trust me, it will make a huge difference! I recently bought a medicine ball for my son from Power Systems for about $30 dollars – which is a steal. And my son LOVES it.
- Pedometer
Get your student a pedometer in 2019. Very much related to #6 above, it’s important to make sure your kid walks enough and maintains a healthy lifestyle. Which he or she won’t, on their own. Let’s be clear – freshman 15 is a real thing, and if your kid doesn’t pay attention, it’s going to be sophomore 10 and so on, and so forth. And do yourself a favor and buy your student an affordable pedometer. Check out this list of best pedometers in 2019 and choose whatever fits your budget. It’s totally worth it.
Whether you’re budget is on the smaller side or you’re willing to splurge a bit if it keeps that teen on track, sometimes a little incentive or reminder can have a pretty significant impact, especially considering the hardest part of the race is the last lap! Fun, quirky, study-driven, any of these gifts would be a nice little reminder to truck on through these last few months and weeks of school until that glorious first day of summer vacation.