Bag
Packing a bag is less about the motions and more about thinking a few steps ahead: where are we going, for how long, what's needed then. The visual support below makes that hidden planning visible.
Bag
A brown paper bag with black handles.
About this visual support
The tricky part of a bag is that its contents are dictated by something that hasn't happened yet. Library, football, grandma's house — each answer makes a different list, and for a child who struggles to hold several future scenes in mind at once, packing becomes guesswork that ends with something important missing.
Visual support flips the order. Instead of constructing the list mentally, the child sees the options laid out as pictures and matches them to today's errand. Water bottle, book, raincoat, bus card — each image asks one small question: do I need this today? The decision is concrete, not abstract.
A useful trick: spread the pictures on the table next to the empty bag and let the child move over the ones that belong with today's plan before touching any actual item. Planning becomes its own step, separate from the physical packing, and the child sees the whole picture before the bag starts filling. To build reusable packing lists for recurring errands, you can assemble the images into routines in the Routined app.