Supporting Transition with a Weekly Calendar
Visual support tools are an incredibly effective way to enable children to follow routines and develop independence skills. We think they are so useful that we will be devoting a month to sharing our top tips on using different types of visual support later this year.
Does anyone else stick post it notes up to remind them to do something?
As adults we use calendars and planners all the time to support us in our day to day lives including appointment calendars, lists, weekly meal planners, workout plans or even setting reminders on our phones. When working in a school, I never went anywhere without my trusty diary. It was the centre of my organisation and I felt totally lost without it. So much so that even now I cannot go into a professional meeting of any kind without a diary or notebook in my hand, whether I am planning to take notes or not! The diary helped me to feel that I was in control and could refer back if I forgot something. Visual support offers this same reassurance for children.
When introducing a new routine, visual support is particularly important as children have a lot to get their heads around! For children starting preschool or primary school we recommend using a weekly visual calendar. There are some lovely examples of weekly calendars for kids on our pinterest page with lovely symbols and pictures. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/16f480f76a3eb8e535dd82355e468f/weekly-calender/ Although these are wonderful, an effective calendar doesn’t need to look beautifully presented or polished to work really well. Hand drawn pictures on a whiteboard work equally well.
Many schools have a staggered start at the beginning of the reception year, meaning that initially children may be attending mornings only or only on specific settling in days. This can be a little confusing without something visual to refer back to. An additional benefit to using a visual calendar is that it supports children’s development of conceptual language relating to time (days of the week, morning, afternoon, before\after) and the development of early literacy skills (tracking from left to right\ top to bottom, understanding that pictures and text carry meaning, reading labels).
Top tips for getting the most from your calendar:
It is important to put the calendar together with your child. This helps the child to understand what is happening and allows time for you to check that they know what the pictures or words mean. If they are able to contribute to putting the calendar together, by selecting the correct pictures or helping with the drawing, this helps them in feeling ownership of the routine and enables them to better understand it.
Keep it simple! Only add a couple of key ideas each day which help the child to understand the main things they will be doing and anything that happens on a specific day each week; for example PE is always on Wednesdays or after school on Mondays is the weekly swimming lesson. Cluttering with too much information will lead to more confusion.
Repetition is important. Recap what is on the calendar for the day in the morning and look ahead to the next day in the evening.
Make it really clear who is collecting the child from school. This is especially important if it is not the same person each day. For a child to separate confidently, they need to feel secure in the knowledge that someone is coming back for them. This can be done using photos or symbols of the people or if a child has some letter knowledge using the first letter of their name.
Help your child to help themselves. If your child asks question about their week, encourage them to look at the calendar to see if they can find this information. Over time this will help the child to refer to the calendar for themselves.
Stop your calendar from becoming forgotten wallpaper by referring to it frequently.
To get more of our top tips and tools join our Confident Communicators Group (supporting development for 2 – 5 year olds).
The group is open to parents/ carers/ grandparents and early years practitioners.
Do come along and join us!