Seven Daily Board Tips and Tricks
You are missing out if you haven’t picked up our Daily Board for each of your kids. I know I’m biased but I promise our Daily Boards will change your day and the amount of fighting that happens over screens or feeling entitled to buy new things. It teaches them to work for what they want while giving them choices on how they accomplish their tasks.
We are giving you 7 tips in 7 days to set your Daily Board up for success! Here’s the first one:
1. We don’t allow any screens until they’ve finished the required items on their board. Our kids love doing exercise videos on YouTube but we limit how often they do them because they’d often just sit and watch the videos instead of doing the exercises.
Our requirements:
- Finish all activities under Day, added reading for 20 minutes and homework during school except brush teeth and room cleaned done before bed
- Pick 1 Body activity for 30 minutes, we also count sports practices, swimming at the pool or summer camps where they move their body
- Pick 2 Mind activities for 30 minutes each, we change the activities based on how fun of parents we want to be that day 🤣
- Pick 1 Home chore, very conscious of what the different ages can accomplish
2. Our kids know an activity is not considered finished until it’s also cleaned up. The first few days they would finish their board but the house would be trashed. It isn’t as frustrating knowing that they were playing together and doing activities that are building them up but setting this standard was a game changer and kept frustrations down.
3. We keep our Daily Boards hanging in our mudroom with Velcro command strips. This gives them the ability to hang the board and quickly see what they have left to accomplish. It also makes it easy to take off and carry around as they work on it.
4. Our Daily Clings are stored in one of our storage boxes in our mudroom for Jordan and I to quickly switch out which clings we want to add or remove to each kid’s board. We consider the age and ability of each child when we add the clings to each of their boards.
5. We have a huge bin of my Grandma Fern’s vintage buttons that I didn’t know what to do with. Now our kids earn a button when a task is finished or if we see them helping or being kind. They also lose a button if they are being unkind or not helping when asked. It’s pretty typical for them to earn 10 buttons a day. We count them each Sunday during family council and they cash them in from our reward chart. We want them to learn how to budget and save up for things they want to buy or do. It amazes me how cooperative they become to earn a button. 🤣
6. We LOVE using wet erase markers to write in what the requirements are for that day. They are similar to dry erase markers but don’t easily smudge and cleanup easy when sprayed with water. On slower days we had more non screen activities but on really busy days we give them more flexible requirements. We write 20 on reading and have them set a timer to the whole time in. Do not use dry erase markers on the clings, the chemicals in those type of markers will strip off the ink.
7. Stay consistent! Every single day our kids finish their board before they are allowed to use screens. However, what they are required to accomplish is flexible and changes based on the day and needs. I wanted to create something that was adaptable based on your family’s needs and give you the tools to create a system that works best for your kids. Some days we only require the basics of their day (make bed, brush teeth, get dressed, etc). Kids thrive on consistency.