Make a plan
Laying out a day in advance means thinking about things that have not happened yet and weighing them against each other. For a child that is abstract and hard to hold in mind. With the visual support below, the future becomes something you can lay out in front of you and see.
♀Write in the planner
A child writes in a calendar with thought bubbles showing a sun, a bag and a shopping cart above.
About this visual support
Time is invisible, and the future even more so. Planning means picturing things that do not exist yet, holding several of them in mind at once, and deciding what comes first. It is one of the hardest mental exercises we ask children to do, and many get stuck precisely because it all has to stay inside the head.
A visual support moves the planning out of the head and onto the table. When each activity is a card, the child can touch the future: lay the cards in a row, swap their places, see how the day fills up and where there is still room. The abstract becomes manageable, and the child can practise prioritising without also having to remember everything. Physically moving a card is an easier decision than rethinking the whole day in your head.
One tip just for planning: start with only three cards, a morning, a middle and an evening, before building out to a full week. Too few choices is easier than too many, and the feeling of success breeds the urge to plan more. In Routined the child can plan the day digitally and move the steps around with a finger, with fourteen days free to try. The images below also print well to use as loose cards.