Part of my heart for starting Meaningful Mama was to motivate myself to actually put into motion the actions I always envisioned doing as a mom. I was surviving, but I wasn’t the mom I pictured. I wanted to do more crafts, be more consistent in my parenting, engage more, be intentional and put systems in place that would work for our family. This daily routine checklist for kids is one of those systems that we have needed to function better. I finally made it happen.
* Affiliate links provided for your convenience. Anything you purchase through these links helps to support Meaningful Mama and the free resources I provide. Thank you for choosing to support us.
I have been teaching my kids the same routines over and over again since they were two. Sometimes I’m shocked that they are still not doing things naturally. There is one that seems to embrace and adopt the routines more quickly than others. The other two still need a lot of reminders. When we arrive home in the evening, I still ask all of the questions. What do we do when we first walk through the door? (Take off our shoes and put them in a cubby.) What’s next? (Go to the bathroom and brush our teeth.) Then? (Go Potty) Next? (Get a drink of water)… and on and on. We have been doing this routine for 6 years and yet some of the kids walk through the door, and I find their shoes sitting in the middle of the living room. What? Seriously? Apparently, God decided that I really needed to learn the gift of patience. It’s also been evident that my kids would benefit from a visual checklist.
I decided it would be helpful if I created a daily routine checklist for morning, after school and evening. My kids can have more ownership over the routine rather than me constantly reminding them of the process. I’m sure we are all tired of my voice by now. I know you might have a different routine, and I know you definitely have different kids, so I couldn’t make this a printable for you. However, I figured it would be helpful to show you an example of how I put it together so you can fashion your own that fits your family needs. I also am giving you instructions so you can make it on your own. Laser printers tend to print more bold colors if you are wondering how I was able to get the great colors in the one I printed. Once I designed the routine checklist and printed it, I laminated it so they could use dry erase markers to mark off the steps as they take them in the morning, afternoon and evening. I have loved having my laminator, and I was pretty surprised at how responsibly priced they are. Here’s a link to one that is super inexpensive and has high reviews. I’d also love for you to check out the fun laminated project we have done in the past.
How to Create a Daily Routine Checklist for Kids in Canva
Creating this checklist in Canva is super easy. I am going to give you step by step instructions you can duplicate the idea for your own family.
- Go to www.canva.com.
- Choose “use custom dimensions” in the upper right corner and make your paper size 8×10 inches. You will have to change from pixels to inches.
- Choose a custom background. Once chosen, you can click on it and change the color to any color you’d like.
- Add a text heading. The font I chose was “Crushed,” and I sized it to 64. Canva will let you know that it is center with a guideline.
- Click on search in the upper left and choose lines. I chose a dotted line, which I changed to white. Expand it out to the edges. Make a copy of that line so you can put the dotted line above and below your your title.
- Chose another text for names. I chose “Architect’s Daughter” and sized it to 24. Position it on the left.
- Go to search in the upper left and choose shapes. Choose a square and change the color to white. Size it, select it and copy it so you can move these in a line to create your checklist boxes.
- Add more text for the daily tasks. I used “Crushed” for this as well. The size I chose was 56.
- Once you have created the entire sheet, you can copy the entire page by selecting the copy icon directly to the right of your created image.
- Now that you have a copy, you simply need to change the tasks and colors to your liking so that you have one for morning, after school and evening.
This is a GREAT idea. I’ve already ordered my new laminator.
Yay! It’s so much fun. I’m glad you found this helpful.
Thank you so much for writing out the instructions to do this. I’m working on my own (almost finished!) and it has been so easy to follow. I’m just copying your whole design so it’s taken me 1/2 the time it usually does to create something.
THANK YOU!!
I’m so glad this was helpful. Thank you so much for letting me know. It’s fun to know when people are using my ideas, so I appreciate you checking in. I hope it goes well.