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Kids activities Help to get organized

Working parents or single parents with kids on the go, often have to learn to keep up to or track their children’s activities to know where they should be, when they need to be there, and what days what child has to be where…..sound confusing? If you have even one child and your mind is swirling with trying to keep up on all the events that your child participates in, just think if you had two, three or four children who are involved in various sports, activities, study groups and more!

No matter what you do need to start a schedule keeper not only so you know where you have to run the kids, but that someone could ‘step in’ incase you were out of town, out sick or if an emergency came up and your children needed picked up or contacted.  One of the best things that you can do is create a home version of the schedule, so that your kids always know where you are and how to find you, and a pocket version of the schedule, so you can find or get to the kids when you want and fast without having to run home.

So now that you have two schedules that you need to keep, one for home and one for your car, office, or where ever you go, you need a ‘way’ to keep track of it all.  Now you have paper or technology.  Take your choice, but here are a few things that you can do:

Technology and Schedules: you have calendars galore over the Internet, most likely in your email, or on your desktop that you can use to keep everything organized at a glace, but the only thing is you have to take the time to actually enter it all, every week or month, or it is going to be useless to you.  You have to bring a listing from home and enter it at work, or carry a handheld that will have all the information in it that you enter from the schedule at home.

The great advantages of using a hand held or a desktop calendar, is that it is all going to be there and you can access it fast, sometimes even from where ever you are, not just in the office, or in the car. The one disadvantage of the technology side of the world is that it is possible your computer could crash leaving you in the dark, you can’t access or you forgot to access before you left your desk and so on.  It seems to be that the hand held with a calendar makes the most sense for the parent on the go, and it is easier to enter all the information from home while you are at home instead of having to do the work twice.

Paper Schedules: The art of keeping track of schedules of a piece of paper, a calendar, in a date book, or on a mini calendar is actually quite efficient, quick and depending on your own personal writing, easy to use as well.  Of course you do run the risk of losing your calendar that you keep with you at all times, but you can go back and make another copy of the home schedule without losing much time.  The paper schedule or calendar that you will carry with you is just that, another thing that you have to carry with you at all times.  From the car to your office, and back home again, your schedule keep you in touch with where your children are, where they need to be and when you have to be there.

If you have two, three or more children, often putting the date and time in different colors is going to keep your organized.  Take for example, one child has piano on Mondays and Wednesday while another has baseball on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.  Writing the time in blue for the one child, all the time, and another child in green, you will quickly know who has to be where and at one time, leaving you lots of room on the calendar to write other needed important events.

Your children depend on you being there for them, getting out to the field in time, to the recital as it starts, and for helping them with their homework on the days that they are home from school.  Knowing and keeping track of where your kids can be easy when you get in this simple habit of keeping a calendar with you, even during the slow activity months!  Giving your kids the power to contact you when they need you no matter where you are by giving them your schedule is going to bring families closer, even if they are only calling you at work to ask where the jelly is!