Fun Tween Tradition on School Year's Eve: Schultuete

Happy Back to School! Our tweens return to school tomorrow, including one starting middle school (!). The girls aren't the ones only excited/nervous about Back to School - Mom loves the idea of starting fresh too. Readers know that the MsTwixt household celebrates every little thing, so here is one of our tweens' favorite Back to School traditions that your family might enjoy too:
Schultuetes are a German tradition of giving paper cones filled with school supplies and trinkets to celebrate the first day of school. They remind us of Christmas stockings. They are SO easy to make - all you need is: poster board, a stapler, some tissue paper, scissors, a glue stick, and a piece of ribbon.
Here are  the instructions:
1) Roll a piece of poster board into a cone shape. Your goal is to have the smallest opening possible at the tip of the cone. The overall size of the cone itself isn't critical. We find that a standard piece of drugstore poster board rolls naturally into a narrow cone that is approximately 30" tall.
2) Staple the poster board closed to keep the cone shape, and then trim the base of the cone so that the end is fairly level (precision isn't important here).
3) Decorate the outside of the cone as you like - we tend to use school colors and then use Sharpies to write our tweens' names on the schultuetes. Stickers are a great choice too.
4) Fill the cones with small school supplies. This year we included PJs from BeePosh, thin pens to help her color-code her notes, personalized pencils from Oriental Trading, erasers, rulers, portable hand sanitizer gel, a new toothbrush, and some scratch-n-sniff stickers.
5) Once the cones are filled, run glue stick along the INTERIOR edge of the cone's base. Then press tissue paper along the glued edge (we find that 2 pieces of tissue paper works well).
6) Cinch the tissue paper closed with the piece of ribbon, and Voila - a homemade schultuete! Schultuetes can be made in any size and any color combination - have fun with it!
Our tweens open theirs the night before school starts (School Year's Eve), and it's a great opportunity for parents to tuck in any straggling supplies.
What Back to School traditions does your family have? We'd love to hear!
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