Free activity
Free time sounds like a gift right up until someone has to fill it. Without a visible menu, plenty of children end up on the sofa announcing that there is nothing to do, in a room full of options. The visual support below turns those options into choices.
♀Free activity
A cheerful girl raises both arms, holding a gift in one hand and a crossed-out money symbol in the other.
♀Person jumping above a banner
A happy person with a ponytail jumps with arms raised above a pile of colourful leaves and a blank blue banner, surrounded by sparkles, music notes and a speech bubble with a coin.
About this visual support
An empty hour asks more of a child than a full one. Choosing play means recalling what exists, comparing the options, settling on one and then actually starting, and that chain is exactly the part that runs out of fuel late in the day. What looks like boredom is often a stalled decision.
A picture menu turns the task around. Instead of inventing something from nothing, a child picks between five or six visible options, and the decision shrinks to a size that fits. A tip that tends to hold: sort the cards by how much company they need, one pile for things that work alone and one for things you do together. That way nobody discovers halfway through that the chosen activity needed a second person.
In Routined you can add a child's own favourites as choosable cards and put a length on the free stretch, so the hour has an end as well as a beginning. The pictures on this page are free to download, and the app comes with a 14 day trial.
Use this image in a schedule
Build your own visual schedule with this image and download it as a print-ready PDF. Completely free.
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Take the visual supports with you
In Routined you build schedules from these pictures, add timers and voice instructions, and your child follows the day on their own.
* 14-day free trial included for new users.