At the end of November, Liv kept asking me how many night it would be before “Sinterklaas” evening (a Dutch tradition), and how many nights till Christmas and how many night till the ice skating court would open and how many nights till the fireworks (but also how many night till Happy Hearts Day – Valentine’s Day, thank you True), Easter, her birthday, you name it!). So Liv and I started a little project. In this blog a few tips for the best calendar for kids.
DIY
I decided to -like my mom used to do- make a calendar myself. But then one where she could help me make it. She was the one who could draw what would happen that day. It wat really fun to make it and she knew exactly what drawing meant what. I didn’t really think it through and I didn’t the calendar in weeks, but just looked at how many days would fit in a row. But nevertheless she really liked it. The only thing I noticed was, that after we made it, she didn’t want to make any new drawings for new appointments. And I on the other hand, didn’t want to make a calendar every week or month.
Tips for calendars
I asked for advice on Instagram: “What calendar would you recommend with enough space to draw on?”. I received a lot of tips that I would like to share with you in this blog. It already helped me that many of you used the word “Family Planner”. I was searching with the key phrase calendar, but using Family Planner you find more options with more space to draw. If you live in the Netherlands and you would like to have links to Dutch websites, then please check out my Dutch blog using the flags above. If you are used to ordering on Amazon, then here’s an overview of family planners on Amazon!
Magnetic board and/ or white board
A few people said: just buy a white board or magnetic board and make your weekly/monthly planning on there. I liked the idea, but “the problem” is with most whiteboards is that you can only make one week or month at a time and Liv is already talking about her birthday in July. I want to be able so show her how long it takes before it’s July. If you can “only” plan one week or month, you can’t add any appointments or special days in the further future. But there is one exception. This huge white board has an overview for a year! And it comes with really cute magnets.
If you don’t mind planning a week ahead then this is a cool white board with lots of space to draw pictures on and it plans a month instead of a week! The one I like the best is this magnetic board! It also comes with really handy magnetics, but you can also write on it, so it’s 3 in 1 actually. Again, this one plans for a whole month.
Another option is a chalk board, this one also plans a whole month.
On paper
If you rather use a paper calendar there are lots of options too. We ended up choosing one from a store here in the Netherlands that is a little similar to this one.
Icons
Like I said in the beginning, Liv didn’t want to draw everything. Esther gave me a really good tip: work with icons! I got mine from a Belgium website called Sclera, but you need to use Dutch search words. Here is an English website with also very cute symbols! You can find a symbol/icon for almost everything. Liv did find the black and white a little boring, so I’ll start printing from this website now too, since they have more colored icons. We combined the symbols, with some other pictures from internet and drawings 🙂
I’m very happy with what we have right now and so is Liv. It gives you a good overview per week, but enough weeks to work ahead.
Do you have any tips that are not in this blog yet? Let me know!
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