“You have a voice, be heard. You have a gift, share it.” Ta'Kaiya Blaney
We wanted to help make scheduling and planning daily routines a little bit easier. When it comes to making a schedule, we can think of ourselves as architects drawing up the plans for what our house will look like. Next, as we consider what daily routines are important, we can think of ourselves as interior designers planning out how we will use the spaces in our house. Lastly, some of our routines might require on-going creative ideas, and here, we can think of ourselves as the homeowner deciding how to decorate the house so that it feels like our home.
Let's think of an example if we have to do school from home. How might we schedule time for school work in the week? The school district has suggested guidelines for primary grades to have 5-7 hours of school work per week. We might consider scheduling one hour of each day dedicated to focusing on school work. Luckily, all the school activities have been planned and prepared by your amazingly creative teachers. But some things in your routine don't have a teacher to have it ready to go for you. And this is where we would like to help.
As you think about creating a schedule, you will find some effective strategies below that could help in designing it. We've also thought about some ideas that you could include as a routine or part of a routine in your schedule. We've even gone one step further and planned daily activities for those routines. And each week, we will release new weekly activities for these routines which will slowly help build up a collection activities for you to access. In time, you may start to acquire some favourites and start to adopt them as a regular part of your household's routine. And many of you likely already have a variety of routines on the go that work for you, but you might be looking for new things to do. So go ahead and scroll below to explore ideas to help you consider schedules in your household, and go directly to explore the planned daily activities for practical ideas that you can play with to make routines in your schedule by clicking here.
Start slow
take small steps when you are making change by adding a routine
try choosing one routine and make it happen consistently for a week
then try adding another routine into your schedule
List only the essential activities of the day
adding too much will make your day feel rigid and inflexible
it will easier to stay on track and be consistent
Ensure there is balance in your day between work, play and relaxation
think about time for school work, time for physical movement, time for screen time and non-screen time, time for breaks/snacks, time for meal times, and time alone and time together
Regular bedtimes and wake-up times
Input from everyone in the household
when we feel that we've had a say in what happens in our day, we're more inclined to enjoy the day ahead of us
Make it visible!
put the schedule up for the day allows everyone to see it and know what to expect (use pictures to help)
Review it each morning
Have fun with it
make sure that when all is said and done, the schedule you have made is something that you look forward to and enjoy each day
Here's a different way to consider planning out your day!
Here is a sample schedule to give you some ideas for your own!
Try this log to help you build a new healthy habit into your routine!