New Schedule

Everyone I have spoken with has mentioned the need of regularity and scheduling in coping with a child on the autism spectrum or ADHD. Princess Kitten seems to be both, so it should make it doubly needed, right? In any case, I went out and bought some supplies and went to work to make a schedule. What I have so far is just a work in progress. Its not perfect, but using this first design should help me find the flaws so I can make it perfect for her.

To make this, I simply wrote "Daily Plan" on the top of a piece of card stock then laminated it with two sheets of heavy duty lamination. (The velcro didn't go on until much later.)

Then I went online and found all the little pictures I wanted to use. I used Google Image search to find them all, and hit the Search Tools to narrow my search parameters. I specified an exact size of 100px by 100px that way I knew I'd get something small enough for this. Then I copy and pasted each image to a word file and added the words. I made sure to set it to 3 columns to make sure I had as many on a page as I could fit.

These were then printed on regular paper, cut out, and pasted onto card stock. Then those pieces were cut into 2 inch squares. I still had leftover laminate sheets, but I wouldn't have had enough to cover all the pieces. So I redneck laminated them.

The back of each square is covered with duct tape. I was forced to use two strips for each square because the squares are larger than the tape. But once I had them on the tape, I trimmed them so that the tape didn't hang over the edge. Then I used packing tape to cover the top and let that hang over the edges. To give the pieces extra strength and to make sure I covered all the edges, I used three pieces of the packing tape for each square.

Each square got a piece of velcro (the soft side) and was then placed in a ziploc bag. After I (finally) finished all the pieces, I used a few squares to add the other side of the velcro to the main page. There is even a square at the very top of it for one of two squares that say "School Day" or "No School" to help us with the constant question (and subsequent meltdowns).

Unfortunately, I am seeing now that I may need to have more than one sheet for a whole day. No big deal, I'll just have to take care of that soon. I'm also noticing I left a few things out when making the squares. Again, no big deal, I'll add to the collection as we go along.

We shall see how this works for us, see if it helps her transition throughout the day. I'll keep everyone updated here, and maybe (eventually) get my list of squares put up on here so everyone knows what I'm using.

Do any of you use schedules with your kids? How do you do it? Let me know in comments!