Tuesday Time

We basically live on Tuesday time around here. Especially in the evenings. I’ve attempted to get on a schedule with her before, and I’ve heard how much kids secretly love that and blah, blah, blah. But it has never worked for us. The closest thing to a schedule has been the last almost two years in her nap being somewhere between lunch and dinner. The biggest wrench in the whole thing is her night time sleep. I mean it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you rock your kid for hours at night, and it’s 11:30 before they get to sleep, you’re going to have to stay up pretty late if you had anything to get done. Along that line, here’s what I worked on until 2:30 AM yesterday!

I’m really, really hoping this visual schedule works for us. If it doesn’t at least I’ll know I tried EVERYTHING!

I made the cards from old Kolo pages I cut apart and vinyl letters cut from my Silhouette SD (note: for this transfer tape is a must, so you don’t have to move letters one by one). I made them the same size as the cards that came with the chart (I used this one). First I went through my stash of photos already printed  to find activity pictures, and cut them 2″ high. For the activities that were missing I finally figured out how to print custom sizes on my little 4 x 6 printer, so I printed two to a page. Side note: I have a Picture Mate from Christmas 2005 that still totally rocks my socks. I can’t recommend that little Epson enough! If you’ve done Week in the Life with Ali, than you probably have most of things you do day to day in picture form! A lot of my photos are from that week.

Tuesday loves this thing. A little too much, I think I’m going to laminate all the cards before she wrecks them. My original idea was just to use this in our newly implemented “school” time. Since routine in general is hard for us and concepts of before, after, in an hour, later, etc. are too I thought this would help with our day over all. I’m going to try it out for a while and see how it goes. I do wonder what will happen if something doesn’t go as planned, I’ll probably just slip the cards out. And it would be fun to leave a gap and give her three card options to choose from. Or later on leave a few out and let her decide which comes first, etc. I’m pretty excited about it. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Oh and I should mention that the nap didn’t happen today, which knocked out writing notes and scrapbooking (and made her CA-RAZY by four).

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28 Comments

  1. Don’t worry I’ve got a “grandma time” card already made up! She has play group tomorrow morning, so I’m thinking that should exhaust her!
    Amber

  2. Looks great Amber–I hope that helps some! I think even if you get some sort of loose schedule, you’ll be much happier…Ours was always forced–and we’re all night owls…so I know how you feel.
    Hang in there mama!

  3. Great job on the visual schedule. Tuesday will eventually get there. I agree with Mary. I think just getting on even a “loose” schedule will make you happier. Good luck!

  4. This is an awesome idea! You could even take a daily photo to remember what you did on Monday etc. It is a good way of keeping yourself on track too- making sure Tuesday gets a full an active day (something I struggle with)! Also- this must have taken HOURS and HOURS to make. OH MY GOSH it is amazing!

  5. Hi Amber, This came out really great! I would definately laminate them so you get a lot of miles out of them. Having taught pre-school for 12 years, the things you are doing for Tuesday are just what she needs and this daily schedule is perfect for adding a routine and loose stucture to her day. Children thrive on this and including her is even better. When a random thing can change in the middle of the day, we would have a ‘magic card’. We would let the children know we were replacing what was on the schedule. Naturally in a group it was not always recieved well, but with Tuesday, you could add a surprise to it if this starts to upset her. Keep a small box available with small tokens. Coupons for an extra story, one big hug, a new hair clip….etc. And maybe just try moving that bedtime up by a half hour every couple of nights. I’m sure you have tried a good routine of bath, book, cuddle time….
    Good luck with all this. Your a great Mama:)

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