Articles : Tutorials - Hybrid

"Mommy, what are we doing tomorrow?"

Creating a visual activity calendar for your children

Our summer has been pretty non-scheduled. Lots of lazy days, and lots of goofing off. Pretty soon, though, Jake will be back in preschool, I'll be teaching piano lessons after work again, and getting together with my best friend will take advance planning. (No more nights of "hey, I'm bored -- wanna come over?")

Doing something different every day can be frustrating for young children, especially when they can't remember what to expect next. (And kids like Jake? They need to know what to expect.) Try as I may, I have yet to get Jake to really understand the concept of a week. This makes it very hard to explain his schedule.

For example, every Monday Jake has an appointment with his Occupational Therapist. We LOVE Rachel. Jake is constantly asking me if we're going to see Rachel that day. When I say no, he says "But the next day?" Even when we just saw her the day before. It's hard to get him to understand how many days it is until "playtime" with Rachel again.

So I've been trying to explain to Jake what his weeks will be like once school starts, but I wasn't making much progress. I thought about drawing a chart, but then I thought "Hey, I'm me! I don't draw charts, I open Photoshop documents!"

I have some chipboard album pages (which are very similar to these) that measure 9.75 inches wide, and 5.5 inches high. This is the perfect size for a weekly photo chart. I found a calendar grid in a Shabby Princess calendar and used my Lasso tool in Photoshop to extract just the grid to a new document. Since it was baby blue, I used "Image > Hue/Saturation" to turn the grid black. I used a text layer to insert the days of the week, then started looking for pictures.

I decided to use the same picture over and over to represent similar items on different days, which is why you see nine copies of the picture of Jake and I. At his age, I don't want to confuse him -- the whole point of this chart is to have an easy visual representation that Jake can understand.

Ok, so let me explain how this chart works for us.

The top and bottom columns represent waking up and bedtime. During the work week, we drive to my mom's house while Jake is still asleep, so he wakes up at Nana's house. He can see that on the weekends, he'll wake up with me, and every night when he goes to bed he's with me.

Weekends are special, because Jake and I just hang out together. On Saturday the Hungry Hippos picture represents how we can play whatever board games he wants, or just laze around inside. He can also play in our backyard (thus the playground picture) or we can swing together on our bench swing. These two pictures help give him the understanding that Saturdays are mommy and Jake play days. Sunday we go to church, but the rest of the day is for play.

As for the week days: the pictures of Lucy the puppy represent the days where Jake spends all day at Nana's house and can play with the dog and out in Nana's huge backyard. The other two weekdays, he goes to school for 5 hours a day. Wednesday/Friday, his friend Zoe will be at Nana's house with him. Mondays are therapy, and Tuesdays are a standing playdate with my best friend. This chart organizes all these basic events so we can see at a glance who he will be playing with on which day.

Notice that I only included basic events. Trips to McDonald's, shopping excursions to Target, special breakfasts at Cracker Barrel, birthday parties . . . these and other fun things happen periodically but don't need to be included on the chart.

I put a picture of the cast from The Office in the Thursday column because we've been working on Jake understanding that one night a week, mommy has a favorite TV show that she goes a little crazy about. There's no talking during The Office -- I can be bothered briefly during commercials, however. That half hour every week needs to be Jake and daddy time, or independent play time.


A project like this is especially helpful for children who don't necessarily process information well when someone jabbers on and on, but who understand visual representations. I only had to explain one time what each picture meant, and Jake totally understood. He had a huge smile on his face, and his eyes completely lit up when I showed him the chart and told him what it meant.

At night, Jake often asks me if I have to work the next day (and unfortunately, the answer is usually yes.) With this chart, he can easily see how many days are left in the work week. He'll better know what to expect -- and I'm sure he'll start to, like me, look forward to the weekends. The chart helps him to see that he has something fun lined up every day, and will be spending time with people he loves throughout the week.

Creation/assembly tips:
-- In Photoshop, I made sure the calendar grid was the top layer, so it was easy to position my photos underneath. I was able to see how the the photos fit in the opening as I adjusted them. Then I used the rectangular marquee tool and "Invert Selection" then "delete" to crop the pictures for each square. If I needed to repeat a picture, I just duplicated the layer and moved it over.
-- The chipboard piece was too thick to cut with a hole punch (and there wasn't time to ask hubby to bring out his power tools), so I attached office binder clips to the piece to attach a ribbon for hanging. Ribbon can also be glued with a strong glue to the back of a project.
-- I used Doodlebug Designs "Just My Type" black letter stickers for the title.
-- When creating a project that has to fit to a specific size, the first thing you need to do (even before opening Photoshop!) is get out a ruler. And always leave yourself a little "give" room. I opened a new Photoshop document with the exact dimensions of the chipboard, then made sure the grid had white space all around it. When I was ready to print, I opened an 8x10 blank document and dragged the completed JPEG image onto it. This way the print was still sized to the dimensions I needed, but I could print it at my local Walgreens as an 8x10.

About the author ...
Jen Strange is mama to Jake, a full-time secretary, part-time piano teacher, and obsessive scrapbooker (since her son's birth in 2002.) An avid blogger since 2004, her DigiScrappin' with Jen blog serves as an introduction to digital scrapbooking, while her Stop Piracy blog is a centralized spot for learning about and fighting the piracy of digital scrapbook kits and designs. Jen has been digitally scrapbooking since April 2005; find Jen at www.jenstrange.com and Layouts by the Numbers

Submitted by strangejen